


Four Bullets

by heroic_pants



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, both of them are queer, diverges on from nighthawks, i am in denial let me have this, i can't believe moose/midge isn't a tag yet, i finally got around to updating these tags yay, violence cw i guess but not worse than you would have seen in the episode that inspired this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-01-21 20:42:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12465568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heroic_pants/pseuds/heroic_pants
Summary: "One bullet is usually enough to kill a person. Four bullets should be more than enough to kill two people, certainly.Any other night before this, it would have been. But it wasn’t any other night."*Midge Klump wakes up in the early morning in a parked car with bloodstained upholstery and tries to figure out how she survived what should have killed her the night before...





	1. You've Got To Pick Up Every Stitch

**Author's Note:**

> the first time i watched 'nighthawks' i hated the ending (we JUST MET MIDGE! HER PUNKY HAIRCUT! HER JACKET! AND POOR SWEET BISEXUAL MOOSE!) and the second time i watched it I got a idea. (who needs canon when you can live in denial??)
> 
> i might add more character/relationship tags to this as i go along, depending on how much i keep writing :)

One bullet is usually enough to kill a person.

Four bullets should be more than enough to kill two people, certainly.

Any other night before this, it would have been.

But it wasn’t any other night.  
  


***

  
They barely have time for their fear to register before he starts shooting. Well, she assumes it’s a he. The body looks masculine. Not that she really consciously registers this before the bullets hit them.

The last thing that drifts, half-thought, across her mind is... _I’m gonna die in this stupid waitress outfit_ , and then, _Mom’s gonna be so mad about the drugs..._

And then she loses consciousness, along with a fair amount of blood. And that should be the end of it.

  
***

  
Unbeknownst to the two fatally injured teenagers in a parked car a mile away, a girl around their age gets out of a different car, and looks around.

She frowns. Just like every other street, in every other small town, that they’ve moved to in the last few years. Nothing changes. No surprises.

It’s not her fault. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it sometimes.

And her emotions are particularly strong on this night.

  
***

  
Maybe the sheriff’s caught up with work, or maybe he was just at the celebrations the night before, but no one comes across the car.

Which is how Midge wakes up alone at 5:03am and hears birds screeching outside the cars, but at first she can’t hear them over her own screams.

She looks down and her blood-stained clothes and remembers in fragments what happened – fuzzy though, like it happened a year or two ago, not last night – and gasps in remembering, then her hands automatically fly to her chest. There’s blood on her shirt, but looking underneath it, she can’t see well enough if there’s a wound.

 _Well,_ says a rational voice in her head, _you’d probably feel it much more if you’d been shot._

She can’t argue with that, and yet, she can almost feel where she thought they hit, like sense memory.

Then her mind clears enough to notice the body beside her and she screams again.

  
***

  
If she was thinking clearly, she might have called her Mom or a friend to pick her up, but her head is killing her and all she can do is run away from that nightmare, and keep running until somehow she makes it back to her street.

It looks the same, mostly everyone asleep, but it feels like she can hear every little noise in the silence, magnified. Even the colours of the houses and the trees look deeper and more vibrant. Is it still the drugs? Or is it some kind of weird adrenaline manifestation? She doesn’t feel high – she feels somehow both totally wired and just numb.

She reaches the front door and goes to dig her key out of her little handbag – something she’d blindly grabbed because somewhere in her brain that reasonable voice was saying _you don’t want to have to get a new phone Mom would be annoyed_ and she barely registered it, just picked it up and ran.

Her mom opens the door with a ferocious look and the thought, _oh I’m really gonna get it,_ floats across her mind like it’s any other day and she’s come home late from cheerleading practice. But then her expression to something horrified as she takes in the sight of her daughter, and she gives a sort of strangled gasp that visibly makes her eyes water.

“Mom, I –“ she tries to explain and finds that she can’t finish whatever she was going to say, and just bursts into tears instead, letting her Mom pull her into a tight hug.

  
***

As soon as she’s explained as little of the night’s horrors as she can to give her Mom an idea, and finally taken the bloody clothes off (and put them in a bag in case they need evidence) she showers– the hot water feels good, makes her feel more alive, although under the blood are bruises, that must be what she can feel, but it makes her think about Moose’s body in the seat next to her and she begins to cry uncontrollably until she has to be pulled out of the shower by her Mom.

She has a clean, fluffy towel ready and she wraps it around her like when she was little and took baths. Any other day, she might be totally embarrassed, but she feels like a kid today – small and scared and needing to be looked after by their Mom.

“You need to go to the hospital, honey, before anything –“ Her mom says caringly.

She shakes her head, and feels goose bumps rise on her skin with a shiver.  “No. No I don’t need to! I’m not hurt – We need to go to the sheriff, we need to tell him –“ she breaks off and swallows. Her mom nods.

“Ok, we’ll go there first. Then, you get checked over at the hospital. Deal?” she says, looking at her seriously.

Midge nods.

  
***

The sheriff calls her back though, surprisingly quickly after they’ve left the station and are waiting at the hospital for the doctor.

“We found his car, Midge, but here’s the thing – no sign of a body,” the sheriff says matter-of-factly.

She gasps. “What? It was there – I swear to God, I woke up, he was – “ she has to swallow another sob but it cuts off her sentence anyway.

“Do you think your attacker might have had a reason to come back for him?”

“Oh my god – oh my _god_ – I – God, I hope not –“ she squeaks, and tries to say more calmly, “I don’t-don’t think so. He – he didn’t come back for me...” she gasps again.

“I’m sorry to distress you more, Midge. I understand you’ve been through a terrible ordeal already.” The sheriff, almost like he’s trying to sound comforting but it’s only a shade less gruff than usual, says. “I need to know then, though, and I’m sorry I have to ask – do you know for certain that your boyfriend died from his wounds before you regained consciousness this morning?”

The question hangs in the air. She can hear the buzzing of a fluorescent bulb above her, an irritating mosquito whine.

“I – I, uh,- I thought...I thought...He was....” she says like she’s trying to remember the lyrics to  an old song, like it should be obvious but she can’t quite remember. It’s obvious right? It had seemed obvious. She was covered in his blood and he was white and cold and his eyes were _closed_ , thank God, but he couldn’t have been alive, right?

“I’m sorry Midge, I’m not trying to upset you. But if there’s a chance he’s out in these woods, badly injured and losing blood, we need to know quickly.”

She lets out a sob. “I don’t know –“ then she has an idea. “I’m at the hospital now, I’m going to ask if anyone’s come in –“

“Good idea, but don’t get your hopes up. We need to cover all our bases, but unfortunately, there’s still a good chance he didn’t survive the attack as you thought.” The sheriff says.

“Sure, of course,” she says, manners on autopilot, and hangs up.  
  
  
***

  
Her mom is off getting her a soda, so she drifts out of the room and towards the front desk. She can feel her heart beating faster the closer she gets.

The receptionist gets this look when she first sees her, almost shocked, then settles back onto a professional smile. “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” she asks. “Please – have you had any walk-ins in the last night? Teenage boys? Dark hair, burly, possibly with a gunshot wound?”

The receptionist’s smile falls a little. “Do you know anything about a shooting last night?”

She tears up. “Please – I swear to God I’m asking on the Sheriff’s behalf did anyone come in?”

The receptionist looks at her, apparently accepts this and begins typing on her computer. “I’m just doing a search for you now,”

How much of a search does it need? This creepy-ass hospital barely has that many patients receiving treatment, let alone people being admitted that much overnight.

The receptionist looks up at her with sympathetic eyes. “No young men admitted last night.”

“His name’s Moose, ok? Can you search that?” she says, a little hysterically.

If the reception thinks it’s a funny name – everyone does, parents in this town are sadists, because c'mon  _Midge_? Really? – she doesn’t break. “No Moose.”

Her heart sinks. Somehow, even though she’d seen him get shot – and seen his body next to hers in the car – some part of her had stupidly hoped that, what, he’d gotten up from his bullet wounds? That he’d just been unconscious like her? She’d known it couldn’t be possible, really.

 She begins to cry, and dabs at her eyes. “I’m sorry, I’ll just –“ and she turns to go.

And can’t help but let out of shrill, hysteria-edged scream that earns her a few annoyed looks.

Because Moose Mason is walking into the foyer/waiting room with his parents, looking shaken up, pale, and sickly – but living.  
  



	2. And If You Go Chasing Rabbits, And You Know You're Going To Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the new episode has aired but as of posting I haven't seen it yet, so I don't know how it diverges yet - well it's an AU anyway haha. Enjoy!

She doesn’t care about anything but getting over to him. When she reaches him, he looks as shocked to see her there as she feels.

They stand frozen for a second until she throws her arms around his neck tightly, feeling herself burst into tears, crying into his familiar-smelling neck. It’s weird the things you miss about people when you think they’re dead.

She doesn’t often cry this much, something she’s been working on since she was fourteen and got her hair cut short by a friend’s sister who was a hairdresser (her mother would never have agreed). But it’s been a fairly traumatic few hours, so.

She doesn’t want to let go. She wants to keep him safe in this moment, and not have to deal with everything ahead.

A lot of people think he’s kind of an idiot, and yeah – a lot of football jocks like him aren’t usually the sharpest pencils in the box – but she’d rather date a kind-of dumb but sweet footballer than some of his smarter friends. They get crueller at that end. He wasn’t like that. He didn’t deserve for something so awful to happen.

They break apart finally.

He looks dazed, disbelieving, like he’s searching her face for some kind of sign it’s not really her. He reaches out a hand to touch her cheek, like he’s reassuring himself.

“How – how?” He gets out, sounding completely dumbfounded.

“Me?” she gulps. “How are – you – I saw your b-body – I’m so s-sorry,” she says, breaking down again.

He shakes his head in earnest. “Don’t – don’t cry,” he says, wiping her cheek with his finger. “I must have – I must have been really unconscious when you came to? When did you wake up?”

She thinks about it for a second, gets a flash of her phone’s display, _5:03AM_ , car radio off, blood droplets on it –

She gasps slightly. “Around 5 am.”

He nods. “I woke up and you weren’t there,” he pales, looking truly haunted at the memory. “I didn’t know what happened. I just – I just dragged myself out of the car and stumbled back home.”

Now he looks like he might cry, though he’s keeping a hold on it. “I thought you were –“ he chokes off the sentence like he’s afraid to finish it.

She nods, already feeling her eyes watering again. “I thought you were too.”

He pulls her into another tight hug. “I’m so glad you’re not,” he whispers, and it might seem like an understatement but she understands the emotion in it, and replies with a whisper, “Back atcha.”  
  


***

  
When her Mom finally pulls her back into the examination room, the doctor is there now and asks her a lot of questions.

She’d managed to make it seem to the sheriff that they’d just been at the spot to make out – which is definitely something you want to do in front of your mom and the police, yeah, jus talk about going to a make out point with your boyfriend. But they had gone for a reason, and she didn’t want to have to say the other reason they’d gone – sure she’d just been in a horrific attempted violent murder but she wouldn’t put it past the sheriff to arrest her anyway, just to make an arrest. He didn’t...seem like a cruel man, but he wasn’t exactly used to big crimes. Gossip was he didn’t even actually solve Jason’s murder, it was a group of kids from school, but then again, it was just gossip. t

But if the doctor does blood tests she’ll probably find traces of it in her system. To be honest, she didn’t even really know what was in it, which was stupid in hindsight, but even Reggie wasn’t going to sell her something that might kill them, especially not one of his best friends.

The doctor keeps looking at her, like she’s surprised or suspicious.

Of what, Midge can’t think. If anyone somehow thought she’d been the one to do it – that she’d somehow gotten a gun, decided to shoot her boyfriend, and then suddenly become one of the world’s greatest actresses to fool everyone with her fear and grief – that had to have been blown out of the water the second Moose showed up, still alive, and didn’t immediately point an accusing finger at her.

Maybe she’s just being paranoid. The doctor finally stops her questions to write some more notes.

“I’d like to take a quick physical check-up on you and assess any injuries you sustained in the attack. Is that alright?” she asks Midge kindly.

Midge nods slowly.

“Would you mind waiting outside while I do it, Mrs Klump? If that’s ok with you, Midge?” she says, turning to her Mom. Her mom looks at her, and she feels a needle of panic about her leaving, but she nods again.

Her Mom looks at her, trying not to look anxious and worried like she has all morning, though her eyes betray her, and smiles supportively.

“I’ll be just outside, ok, sweetie? I’m not going anywhere,” she says, falsely light.

She tries to smile back a little at her Mom. It almost feels like she’s forgotten how.

“It’s alright Mom – go get a coffee or something, I’ll be fine in here and then I’ll be out,” she tries to reassure her.

Her Mom looks at her for a moment, looking unsure, afraid to leave. “I’ll be back as soon as possible. Then I’ll be just outside, ok?”

She nods, and on impulse, hugs her. 24 hours ago she wouldn’t have been caught dead hugging her mother this much but then, 24 hours ago felt like a lifetime ago. Like a past life.

She smiles at her again, and goes, leaving Midge with the doctor.

The doctor starts off a list of small things, shining flashlights, and asking her to stick out her tongue. Midge hopes it’s not stained blue or something. Maybe she could say it was sherbet?

“Can you pull your shirt up? I need to examine where you say you were feeling pain.”

She pulls it up, wincing slightly as it brushes one of her bigger bruises.

The doctor sucks in a breath. “That looks painful. How much does it hurt?”

Midge shrugs. “I – it’s alright. I mean, I guess it kind of hurts? I don’t know. But it’s not like killing me, or anything.” She lets out an awkward little laugh at the turn of phrase. _It’s totally killing me,_ the sort of thing she used to say about period cramps.

The doctor nods, understandingly. She examines the bruises a little more. “It’s just –“ she says, and then stops, like she’s not sure whether she should say anything. “This kind of bruising – it’s consistent with worse internal injuries.”

She takes this in. “What does that mean for me?”

The doctor looks at her, quizzically. “If you had the sort of injuries I’d expect from this – you should be in _a lot more_ pain. But you haven’t even asked for anything yet. I mean, maybe you’re just crazy good at dealing with pain – but it should be way worse than this. _And,_ I know you probably don’t feel like hearing this right now, but – I’m still mystified that you managed not to get any worse injuries. It’s almost a miracle.”

Midge looks at her for a moment, taken aback. “Yeah, I guess so.”

There’s a silence while the doctor consults her chart.

“Ok, I’m just gonna say it before your mom comes back in – I might not know exactly what’s the new thing the kids are doing, but I’m not _that_ much older than you. I know they’re doing something,” she says suddenly and Midge freezes.

The doctor shakes her head at her. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell your Mom. Luckily for you, I’ve got bigger things to worry about and I don’t want to get the sheriff’s department involved. Not to mention, that would be kind of a terrible thing to do when you’ve already been through enough. But you need to tell me if anything is going to show up in your blood work.”

Midge breathes out. “Thank you,” she says, meaning it. “There might be...traces of amphetamines.”

The doctor gives her an understanding look. “Thank you for being honest. Makes my job a lot easier when I know the whole story.”

Midge nods. “Sorry.”

The doctor shakes her head. “I get it. That doesn’t mean as a medical professional, I’m officially condoning it. It’s not good for your developing brain. But I know what you kids are like. Telling you that you can’t do something is the worst way to stop you doing.”

Midge finds herself laughing, just a touch bleakly. “Yeah, it’s always the way.”  
  


***

  
They’ve kept her here all day – and they can’t say more than they need her there for “observation”, and to make sure she’s not suffering from any hidden injuries.

As soon as she can get away she walks away and looks for Moose. He’d texted her where he was – apparently he was still getting his injuries looked at. They must be worse than hers, the way he’d dived in front of her, the way he’d looked this morning –

She shakes her head, breathing slowly.

It’s fine now. It’s fine, you just talked to him, he’s ok, she tells herself.

She finds his room. It’s empty except for him, although there are a few more beds in the room.

He looks worse than before – maybe it’s just because he’s in a hospital bed and in a hospital gown, but he looks smaller than usual. It causes her breath to hitch, looking at him.

But then he sees her, and he lights up.

“Thank God, I thought you were my doctor here to do some more tests.”

She smiles. “Yeah, I still might. You don’t know.”

He grins wider, sitting up, then winces.

Seeing her smile fade a little, he pats a space on the bed. “I’m fine. Seriously.”

She shakes her head – he’s such an obvious liar – but she goes along anyway and sits on the bed.

Close-up, he looks better than she expected. Really, she has no idea what she was expecting.

That’s kind of the thing.

“What?” he asks, still smiling, like it’s kind of funny.

She can’t smile back though. “What did the doctors say to you? You – look better than I, than I would have thought –“ she sucks in a breath, shakes the image of him, pale. bloody and apparently not yet dead, from her mind.

His smile has faded, and he reaches out a comforting arm to stroke hers. “Babe, it’s ok – my injuries are much less than they could’ve been, the doctor says it’s like some kind of miracle –“

The word sends a chill spiking down her back, and she stares at him.

“So, you only got shot, like what, once? Is that what she means?” she asks seriously.

He looks taken aback, moves his head back an inch like she’s said something offensive. “No, Midge, they missed me. Must have just grazed me or something –“ his expression changes, like something’s just occurred to him, and he looks at her in confusion. “You actually seem really mobile for someone who just got shot...”

She shakes her head. “But I didn’t. I – I didn’t get  shot, Moose,” she says shakily, pulling her paper gown down at the neck to show him some of the higher bruises.

He looks at her like she’s trying to pull a trick on him. Like when she convinced him that one of the guys in Vampire Weekend was her second cousin, which was hilarious, but there’s really nothing funny about this situation now.

“I don’t understand...” he says slowly, after a moment.

She looks at him, breathing deeply, unable to stop going over it in her mind. _Car-Gunshots-Birds-Blood-Body-Run-Car._

 “You were cold when I woke up, Moose! How did you wake up? How did you walk all the way back to your house? How can you not have been shot at that close range?” she asks frantically.

 He looks almost afraid of her. “I thought _you_ must have been hit. You must have if they only grazed me.”

She looks at him anxiously, feeling on the verge of tears again. “You’ve just got bruises, and maybe some internal injuries but the doctors aren’t sure?” she guesses softly.

“Yeah, exactly,” he replies, looking at her with concern.

“Come on, come here,” he says, holding his arms out next to him. She sinks down next to him, and it feels so much better. Snuggling up like this feels almost normal, like if she closes her eyes, it could be any other afternoon where everything was normal.

He turns to look at her – he has to look down because she’s shorter than him – and says quietly, “Look, I don’t get it either. But right now, we’re here, and we’re alive. We don’t need to examine the miracle, right, babe?”

He looks so sweetly reassuring, even with the small cuts in his face and the paper hospital gown, that she smiles a little. “Right,” she says, and kisses him for the first time since the attack.

In the movies, when a man and woman who love each other have been kept apart by distance or some tragic event, they always run towards each other and kiss like they’re the only two people in existence, like magnets. It’s not, she’s realised, always like that in reality. For one, she was so shocked to see him still living, standing even, that all she wanted to do was hold him, make sure she wasn’t hallucinating because of the trauma. Then suddenly she was being whisked off to talk to the doctor, to get tests, to wait around for hours.

This is the most relaxed she’s been all morning.

She should be like him, not look a gift horse in the mouth, when that gift is her life and the life of her boyfriend.

But she can’t. It shouldn’t be physically possible.

Four bullets, at least, in an enclosed space and not one hit either of them. It doesn’t add up.

She curls up next to him and tries to push the thought away.  
  


***

  
Across town, in a modest but cute two-bedroom rental cottage, the new girl lies on her bed in her new room and listens to music in her headphones.

They were expensive, nothing she could afford for herself but they were a birthday present, so. A sort of birthday/sorry we’re moving so much present that justified the price tag.

It’s not their fault. She’s not annoyed at them for the moving.

But it is draining. Having to go through it all again, and it’s not like they don’t stand out. Having to be the weird new kid again.

The night before she’d been particularly anxious about it. They’d allowed her a day to settle in before she had to register at the high school.

Someone was calling for her. She paused the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song she was listening to and got up. She needed to feed the cat anyway.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title is from "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, and I'm really excited to be inching past set up into plot :)


	3. Cause In The Same Space, We're Disconnected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been a while, assignments have been hectic this month, and also I couldn't figure out how to finish this chapter, but I hope you like it anyway :)

Moose wakes up early. You can’t really sleep properly in these little beds. Or in this room, where you can hear beeps and things, people going past, distant intercom announcements. And since the nurses kicked Midge out yesterday he hasn’t been able to see her again, and there’s nothing like being on your own for long periods in a hospital bed for making you think about the things you don’t want to.

Like what happened. He can’t barely remember it – like static, like when he tries to think about the details he can’t remember them, his last clear memory being driving to the point with Midge, and then some kind of vague sense memory of trying to protect Midge, but how?

The sheriff had stopped by yesterday, to ask him some questions but he said he couldn’t remember, which was mostly true. He didn’t exactly want to tell him about the illegal drugs, especially given that the first time he’d been in a situation like this, he didn’t feel like he’d made the best impression.

“Hide your weed, it’s the cops,” drawls someone from the doorway behind him.

He turns around to see Reggie there, and even his usual cool, cocky smile can’t hide an anxious look in his eyes.

“Reggie! What are you doing here?” he says in surprise, grinning.

Reggie looks at him funny. “Uh, your mom called Coach saying you got shot, dude? You’re my best friend?”

Moose shakes his head. “She did? She’s wrong I didn’t get shot – “

Reggie looks sceptically at him.

“ – I got shot _at_ , or we did, but it’s ok...“

Reggie just stares at him. “Who –“

“I don’t know. Some guy in a hood.”

Reggie nods slowly.

“So then...did Midge get hit?”

“No, just some bruises but she’s alright.” Moose replies, wishing he knew how she was going right at this moment.

Reggie looks at him, mouth slightly open, like he’s processing.

Moose decides to try and lighten the silence. “The doctors are just keeping me here to check me for ‘internal injuries’ I think – my body fucking hurts though like I’ve just done one of Coach’s murder drills, though, hey –“ He pauses. “Aren’t you supposed to be at practice right now?”

Reggie laughs, like he can’t believe it. “Fuck that. Coach cancelled it today when we heard about you.” He laughs again, in the same way. “Like I would’ve fucked around with drills anyway when my bro’s in the hospital!”

Moose laughs a little, and winces. He’s been trying not to show any sign that he’s uncomfortable – people worry, especially Midge – but sometimes he can’t help it.

Reggie’s smiles fades a little. “Fuck man, you had me worried. If someone’s going to shoot two of my best friends, I think I’d have to move Andrews up to the top spot, and I just don’t think he’s ready for that,” he jokes, not totally managing to hide how dark the thought is – that Moose almost went the way of Jason, and neither of them were ok with that either. That’s him though – he’s always had kind of a dark sense of humour, pretending he doesn’t take anything seriously. It’s not true though – most people just don’t see it.

“Move up then dude, I wanna get a look at your pudding cups,” He says in his usual louder voice, throwing himself on the bed next to Moose.

“Help yourself,” Moose says, handing him the untouched pudding from his tray, grinning again. Sometimes you have to do something loud and dumb just to stop feeling -  sad, or whatever and Reggie is great at that.

Reggie raises an eyebrow at him, digging into the cup. “So are the nurses hot? You get any sponge baths yet?” he leers, elbowing Moose.

Moose grins. “Fuck off, Reg. Too much porn.”

Reggie shakes his head. “I’m offended you’d even say that.”

  
***

  
Moose doesn’t have long to feel alone after Reggie leaves, because the next person through the door is Archie.

He looks tired – but his Dad just got out of this place, and he must be flat out looking after him and going to school and whatever else. Did his mom come back to help? He knows she moved away around the end of eighth grade but surely she’d come back for that.

He blinks, shaking off the random thought, and smiles. “It actually looks worse than it is.”

Archie looks at him like he’s speaking a foreign language, and then shakes his head. “Sorry, I’ve got a lot on my mind – what was that? How are you?”

“I’m ok, man. Didn’t get hit, he must have terrible aim,” he says, with a weak half smile.

Archie looks at him, not looking reassured. “Is Midge ok? Someone told me she got shot as well as you,”

Moose shakes. “Don’t worry, she didn’t get shot either.” At Archie’s confused expression, he continues. “I – I shielded her from it with my body. Didn’t even think.”

Archie’s expression softens, though he still looks saddened by something. “Then you’re a hero, bro,” he says kindly. “You saved her life.”

Moose smiles a little at this. He looks at the bags under Archie’s eyes again, and notices how stressed he seems. “How are you? You look like you could use a nap.”

Archie looks at him, taken aback. “What – no, I’m fine. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” He says quickly, shaking his head. “I’m sorry but I gotta ask - did you see the guy?”

“No, I actually – I, uh, barely remember it, honestly...I think he had some kind of dark hat on maybe...” he says slowly. There’s a desperate look in Archie’s eyes that makes him wish he could be more helpful.

“Like a hood?” Archie asks, very seriously. Moose wonders how long he’s been awake for – he seems both wired and exhausted, which is exactly how he’d felt this morning walking home, which feels like forever ago. Someone around him had to notice, right?

“I guess, yeah,” he replies. He pauses. “You sure you’re ok, bro?”

Archie nods quickly. “Yeah – yeah I’m fine. I’m fine. As I said. Long day, with looking after Dad and everything,” he says quickly, almost the same as what he’d said before. Moose knew he’d had kind of a tough year, maybe it was the stress of it all, but he didn’t seem fine.

“Well, I think I have to be here for another day, but like – I know you went through something like this just before – if you need to talk or anything...I got your back, ok?” He says, looking at Archie.

Archie rubs his eyes, and attempts a half-smile. “Thanks Moose. I’ll try,” he says quietly, looking away. “I gotta go now though, just dropping through to see you, gotta figure out dinner. Get better soon,” he adds, looking at him.

And he rushes out, and Moose wonders why he’s apparently making dinner when he’s pretty sure Archie can barely make a pop-tart without burning it.

  
***

  
They let Midge go the next day, having not been able to find anything seriously damaged internally – much to her doctor’s continued surprise, her bruises were going down quicker than expected, and she was walking around enough that they considered her healthy enough to leave.

“Just before I sign the forms to let you out, I have a duty to ask you something, Midge. Is that ok with you?” The doctor asks, as she’s getting her last check-up. It’s just them right now, as her Mom is signing some paperwork outside.

“Yes, Dr Lopez?” she replies.

Dr Lopez looks at her with the same expression she had when telling her that her injuries should be worse – like she’s weighing up whether to say anything.

“You know you can tell me anything about the attack that you’re not...that you don’t want anyone else to know. I’m not interested in getting you in trouble, you know?” she says quietly, looking at her.

Midge is surprised. Since she already figured out about the drugs, there’s really nothing else to tell her. “I mean...you already know everything bad. I can’t think of anything else?”

Dr Lopez looks almost, sad, and sighs slightly.

“Look, I’m not suggesting anything but – the wounds you have? The miraculous escape from bullet wounds for either of you?” she stops, looking like she’s trying to find the right words. “I know you were there maybe to make out or whatever, sorry I had to say that, but – I know what high school footballers are like sometimes...are you sure _nothing_ happened?”

Midge feels like she’s been slapped, and stares at Dr Lopez in momentarily mute confusion. “Are you suggesting – somehow _Moose_ bruised me like this, and then somehow _I_ – what, decided to take advantage of the whole ‘serial killer on the loose’ situation – to protect my boyfriend? Who hurt me this badly? Who I must have hurt just as badly, if not worse, even though he’s much bigger than I am? Are you accusing me of lying? Sorry, but what the _fuck?”_

Midge hopes she didn’t go too far with the swearing at a doctor, but then, also she feels totally justified in her anger.

Dr Lopez shakes her head apologetically. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that – I know, put like that of course it’s nonsensical – but so is this whole thing? And I know how teenage boys can be.” She looks at her seriously. “I am genuinely sorry, Midge, I didn’t mean to call you a liar.”

Midge nods, slightly. “It’s ok. I’ve been called worse.”

She pulls something out of her coat pocket. “I know I’m probably the last person you wanna call, but if you need to talk to anyone about this, I’m here. I’ve put my cell number, so don’t go giving it out, but if you can’t reach me at work and you really need someone to talk to who won’t judge, call it.”

Midge hesitates, but takes the card. You never know when you’ll need someone to talk to.

  
***

  
It was only about just over a day and half ago that she was last here, but Midge feels weird, lying on her bed in her room.

Her mom had given her the rest of the day to relax, said she only had to go back to school when she was ready – but she’d had what felt like a long time just resting on her own. It’s weird, even, to have her mom so reasonable and lenient on school stuff, even though she appreciates the thought.

She thinks about Moose, still there in the hospital. She felt guilty somehow for leaving. He just smiled and told her not to worry, because he’d be out soon. “I’m already feeling better, babe,” he said reassuringly, grinning. “They just gotta do some more checks. I’ll be out before you know it.”

She feels different, being in here. Older. More afraid. She used to think she was brave enough, tough enough to take on a lot of scary things. None of that matters in the face of an angry man with a gun.

She curls up and quietly weeps into her pillow.

But it’s not just that – it’s something she can’t put her finger on. She doesn’t feel back to normal yet. Something feels off.

  
***

  
At the end of the next day, when she can’t bear sitting around the house anymore, Midge decides she’s going to go back to school tomorrow.

Her mom looks worried. “I know you probably want to see your friends, darling...but are you sure you’re ready for it? There’s going to be a lot of questions, I just don’t want them upsetting you.”

She picks at her dinner, and looks up. “I just – I need to have something to – do, Mom. I ... I really just want to get back to normal as soon as possible.”

She doesn’t really know how you go back to ‘normal’ after miraculously surviving an attack like that – but she figures she has to try at least: nearly fall asleep in bio, go to Vixens practice, laugh with her friends at lunch, steal a fry off Ginger’s tray when Cheryl’s not there to make them feel bad about it. It’s funny how you miss those small things when things change and you’re suddenly looking at your life a week ago almost like a past life.

Her mom gives her another worried look, but nods. “Alright, Midge. But _promise_ you’ll call if it gets too much. I’ll come right over from work and pick you up. I mean it.”

She smiles a little at her Mom, more out of appreciation than real happiness at the prospect. “Thanks, Mom. I promise I’ll call if it gets bad.”

Her mom looks slightly more relieved. “Have you called your dad to say you got out of the hospital? I only had the chance to call him when you went in,” she continues, tentatively.

Midge frowns. Her dad worked year-round on a ranch in Montana, which meant she rarely saw him in person, _and_ he’d walked out on them eight years ago, which meant she rarely wanted to. 

“He’s not my favourite person either, honey, but you should let him know you’re ok. I know he’d want to hear that more than anything,” Her mom says caringly, looking at her.

They usually only discuss him when it’s really important, or to do with some payment he owes. Midge doesn’t like how this whole thing means she has to think about him more than usual.

“Doubt it,” she counters, off-hand, but her mom gives her a look. “Ok, I’ll call him. I’m sure he’s waiting by the phone.”

  
***

  
Moose put his bag down and flopped down on his bed. They’d finally let him go, saying that he should try and stay home while his bruising went down more, but that, by some miracle there was nothing damaged internally.

He feels weirdly, very happy to be back in this room, with its tattered old posters he’d had up for years, and the old rug he hated, and that stuffed moose toy Midge had got him once (which he secretly loved, but had to hide any time of the boys came over, for obvious reasons).

His parents had wanted to take him out to dinner, celebrate his quick recovery, but they’d all decided getting food delivered was probably a better call tonight, as he didn’t really want to deal with everyone in town staring at him just yet.

He calls Midge, and she picks up on the first ring.

“I was just thinking about calling you, actually,” she says, and her voice makes him feel like he’s really home again. Not that he’d ever admit that to another Bulldog, he’d never hear the end of it with them. Well, most of them.

“Guess what?” he says, lying back and grinning.

“What?”

“I’m calling you from my house. I’m back, babe!” he says victoriously.

“That’s great babe!” she replies, sounding happy for him. He knows her too well to think this means she’s totally happy though.

“How are you though – really,” he asks.

There’s a pause on the line. “I’m fine...Just talked to my dad, which was kind of a bummer.”

“I’m sorry, babe,” he says, frowning. “What happened?”

“Nothing too terrible...same kind of stilted conversation as usual. But he asked if he should come up and see me, and I said I was fine, and he shouldn’t try and get out of work. It’s just like...he’s probably happy to hear I’m not dead, but he doesn’t want to come here. I don’t want to have to pretend he needs to be,” she says, sighing.

“That sucks. I’m sure – he’s more than just probably happy you’re still alive, Midge. He loves you, even if he – sucks at showing it,” he says, hoping he sounds reassuring. He doesn’t really know what to say in this situation, because Midge rarely talks about her dad, and his parents are still very much together. _That sucks_ doesn’t seem like enough, but he doesn’t know anything else to say.

“Thanks, babe,” she says quietly. “That’s sweet.”

They’re both quiet for a moment.

“So, how was your day? Any other visitors?” she says, in a slightly more upbeat voice.

“Uh, yeah actually,” he says, remembering suddenly. In all of the fuss getting out of the hospital it had been driven out of his mind.

“Oh?”

“Kevin Keller came to see me, which I didn’t really expect,” he says slowly, thinking about it.

 “Kevin? That’s sweet of him,” Midge says genuinely. She knew of course, about the incident at the start of the year – it was a pretty big deal already, even without people wondering what they’d been doing together at the river. But it wasn’t part of their relationship to chain each other together and be jealous. They were still young.

“Yeah, it was.” He says, remembering the conversation. “It really cheered me up, actually.”

“I should thank him for doing that, when I couldn’t be there.” Midge says, genuinely.

Moose pauses. “Yeah...I’m worried about him. He was out in Fox Forest what seems like less than an hour before we were – he could have been next...”

Midge gasps quietly on the other end of the line. “I – but he didn’t see him though?”

“Nope. I think he was gone before...” Moose trails off. There’s quiet on both ends.

“What was he doing out there?” Midge asks after a moment.

Moose pauses. She’s not a gossip, and they’re honest with each other, even stuff they would never tell their friends.

“Same thing as us, I think,” he replies quietly. “Well. Except for the JJ.”

Midge is quiet too, but he can tell she’s just thinking it over. “Guess it’s his business but...it’s dangerous out there. _Clearly_. I’m glad he didn’t cross paths with that psycho.”

“Yeah, he was lucky.” Moose agrees, realising again, how close the three of them had unknowingly come to a horrible end. He shakes his head. No one died. His bruises are healing really well. No need to think about it too much.

  
***

  
That night, three teenagers in three different houses in the same neighbourhood sleep restlessly.

Midge dreams of a hooded man, and the sound of gunshots – the feeling of running, the sound of birds screeching overhead – a bird with sleek black feathers landing on an old cottage- and running, running to catch up with a girl just ahead of her, never seeing her face.

She gasps on waking up, and checks her phone. _5:03am._ She feels a shiver bring goose-bumps up on her skin.

She wants to talk to someone, even though the definition of the dream is slipping away, making less sense in the cold dawn light.

Unexpectedly her phone vibrates as she’s holding it, and she sees a text come in from Moose. _Sry to wake u, rly like to talk when you get up._

She feels a chill again, and calls him. “Hey,” she says, very quietly.

“Did I wake you?” he asks, just as quietly. “I’m sorry, -“

“It’s fine, I was awake,” she cuts him off gently. He sounds a bit shaken. “Are you ok?”

He pauses, breathing down the line. “This is gonna sound lame, but I just had this creepy fucking dream...”

She feels a bigger chill down her spine, feeling it across her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title of the chapter is from faker's 'this heart attack' (let me know if you got this very specific reference haha)   
> i honestly thought i could do more with the plot this chapter, but i had a lot going on and it took me a while to complete, but I like what's been done here anyway. I tried for a while to pay tribute to that great kevin/moose scene but once I figured I was never going to write a similar scene that was as nicely done as that, and I didn't want to verbatim copy it, I decided to have it happen, but off-screen (so to speak) so it was basically that scene, slightly adjusted for plot reasons.


	4. Everybody's Filling Me Up With Noise (But I Don't Know What They're Talking About)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry, to the few of you enjoying this niche fic (i am very grateful for you all!) i have had a lot of work to get finished and i'm fiiiiiiinaaaallly done (combined with i found this chapter difficult to work through until about the middle?) anyway, as always, enjoy :)

Midge faces her first day back at school with stubborn bravery.

Unfortunately, as much as she’d liked to have just go back to a normal routine, that was an impossibility. You can’t be attacked by an unknown town menace, survive and avoid serious injuries against all odds, and return quicker than anyone would expect – not without making you a subject of interest among the student body.

Everyone on the Vixens is thrilled to see her – even Cheryl gives her a wry “Well, glad you’re not dead, Klump,” which is still possibly the nicest thing she’s ever said to her – it’s almost nice enough getting the attention to forget why she’s getting it. Those that didn’t visit say they thought she would be in the hospital longer, and she accepts it, because she thought she would to.

Even Veronica – who she’s friendly with but not exactly friends, given that she’d only transferred at the start of the year and never sat with the Vixens – seemed genuinely happy that she was ok, and actually hugs her comfortingly, saying she’s sorry something so horrible had happened. Unlike some people, she has the kind of personality (probably informed by the glamourous scraps of detail she’d heard in gossip about her previous life in New York) that should signal this act as disingenuous, meant more to make herself look compassionate than really to comfort Midge. Yet, when it’s happening to you, it’s completely the opposite – she makes you feel like somehow, she genuinely cares about what’s happened, and you’re the most important – even if she doesn’t know you that well. Midge feels the slightest twinge of jealousy for Betty, probably her closest friend since she got here, and definitely her closest friend on the squad.

Not that she can feel much of anything bad towards Betty, who also wishes her well, and tells her to let her know if there’s anything she needs, including an ally if Cheryl decides to go off on her today. She says this last part in an undertone, with the hint of a reckless smirk that Midge doesn’t associate with her, but it makes her laugh at least.

*

By lunch she’s sick of the attention, the constant eyes on her. It might be easier if Moose was here, but he called her last night to say his parents wouldn’t allow him to come back so soon after he had gotten out of hospital.  

Everyone wants to know how she survived, what happened, the vicarious fear and exhilaration of surviving an attack. Some of them she can just tell are thinking it, some actually ask. The number of times she has to tell people that no, she wasn’t hit by a bullet before she just stops answering is stunningly high. Jesse Morris asks her in Bio if she recognised the shooter. Harper McDermid gapes at her as they get books out of their adjoining lockers and asks if she thinks it’s the same guy that got that guy on the football team’s Dad. Dilton Doiley offers a perfunctory condolence, clearly waiting for the rest of their class to leave so he can talk to her and then, with a creepy, almost excited look in his eyes, asks her if she knew what kind of gun the shooter was using.

She almost snaps, and slaps him, but instead she says coldly, “Even if I knew, why would I want to tell you, Doiley?”, and rushes away from the classroom.

She skips next period to find a quiet place to smoke. It’s just the period before lunch, and it’s Ancient History, which she’s going to drop soon anyway. She leans back against the cool brick behind her, shielded from view by the bleachers, and blows smoke out. She doesn’t smoke regularly, but it’s relaxing when she’s tense. Not that her mom knows this. She’d freak out. But right now, the argument for them leading to her death seems laughable.

She sees a tall figure standing next to the bleachers, looking at something – a stack of papers, maybe – intently, and knows who it is even before he looks up and catches her eye.

She freezes, before remembering that if anyone is going to tell on her for smoking on school grounds it’s unlikely to be Archie Andrews, and also he’s clearly also skipping this period, so it would be mutually assured destruction.

He’s not close enough for her to say something, but she smiles warmly at him anyway. He doesn’t smile back, but nods and walks over.

Up close he looks worse, even than the day she’d seen him at the hospital, and he’d already looked anxious and underslept then. He looks even more exhausted now, and some lyric from a song she can’t remember flits through her mind. Something about having suitcases under each eye.

She wonders how much he’s slept recently. She’s been restless, only really managing a few hours a night since it happened, interrupted by waking from distant, unsettling dreams and vivid nightmares. She’d hope he’s managing more but by the looks of it, he isn’t.

“Hey, Arch,” she says casually with a friendly smile, dropping her arm to hold her cigarette by her side. “Skipping?”

He looks at her, confused for a moment, then nods again. “Yeah, I guess...” he answers vaguely, like he’s preoccupied with some thought.

“What are those?” she asks carefully, indicating the stack of papers he’s holding.

He blinks at her, seemingly focusing, and blushes slightly.  He almost smiles, an awkward tilt to his mouth, but not quite. It’s weird for her – she hasn’t lived here her whole life, but she has been going to school with him for years, and her impression of him has always been of a happy-looking boy, maybe not the brightest kid, but he used to smile a lot. It was that friend of his that didn’t smile often, not him. And now, as she thinks about it, she’s not sure if it was the shooting that stopped it or something else that happened this whole fucked-up year. She’d heard some disturbing rumours from that party, which she just _had_ to be sick on the night of – but she wasn’t going to ask. She shuddered to think of people like Cheryl raking over _her_ personal life in front of an audience, she wasn’t going to humiliate him again by asking about it, especially when they barely knew each other.

“They’re uh – posters. For information. On the guy who...” He says resolutely, but trails off, like he can’t quite form the words. Or maybe just not around her.

She knows who he means, anyway.

“I’m not trying to skip, but I just figured – I just have English this period, and it doesn’t seem that important when I could be – doing something, or just – at least, putting these up,” he babbles, and cuts himself off, looking awkward.  

“Can I see?” she asks, quietly.

He nods again, slightly, and hands one to her.

If she was in a bitchier mood, she might have laughed. But she’s not, and he doesn’t deserve it. He’s more Moose’s friend than hers, but he still dropped in to see her when she was lying a hospital bed and she needed to see someone, anyone, to distract her.

It’s very amateurish-looking – she wonders whether he hand-wrote the text or has just inexplicably chosen a messy, jagged font – and, in the absence of any real knowledge of the killer’s features, he seems to have drawn a man wearing a black balaclava-type hood, green eyes staring out of the eyeholes. A headline reads “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?” with contact information at the bottom.

Maybe a few days ago, if she’d seen these posters around school or town, she’d have made a discrete joke to Tina or Ginger or someone. Nothing to mock the incident, of course, but maybe her instinct for accurate teenage-girl bitchery would have taken aim at these childish posters. Tina would have laughed, or Ginger would have replied with an even cattier comment, they would have all laughed, felt slightly guilty and then forgotten about it.

But didn’t feel like that girl right now, not after what happened. How can she mock his fear, even privately, when she wakes up in the middle of the night, dreaming about that hood-covered face, and the total remorselessness of the green eyes, for the split second she saw them.

She shivers. “Do you mind if I keep smoking?” she asks, and he shakes his head. She takes another drag, and it steadies her a little.

She watches his anxious face, clearly waiting to see what she thinks. “Do you want one?”

He looks confused again, for a moment.

“Cigarette,” she clarifies, deadpan.

He hesitates, then shakes his head. “No, I – I don’t smoke.”

She accepts this without a fight, but after a second he continues. “My grandpa died of lung cancer. Which, I’m not like – telling you not to, but I just...I was six, and my Dad quit pretty much just after that. He didn’t want that to be the reason I didn’t have a Dad –“ he gulps, cutting himself off, focusing on something in the distance.

She is aware she’s really not a good enough friend to know the right thing to say here. It should be Betty, or that skinny kid with the weird nickname – Jughead? – or Veronica here, who had only known him since she moved here, but would certainly know the right, warm, sophisticated thing to say.

So she just says what she’s thinking, in the nicest way she can without sounding pitying. “How is your dad doing? Is he out of the hospital?”

He looks back at her, looking surprised but grateful for the concern. “Uh – yeah. He’s out now. He’s doing good, but he has to rest a lot. I’m trying to look after him, but I’m not great at cooking. At all.”

She smiles slightly. “What about your mom?”

His eyes flick away for a moment. “She was there for the first few days, and she would have stayed longer but there was some crisis at work. She – she was going to tell them she couldn’t, but I could tell it was stressing her out, and being away from her job for so long would be really bad. Like, someone’s life might be in serious trouble.” At her confused look, he explains, “She’s a lawyer. She works for a really big company in Chicago.”

“Oh. Cool.” she replies. “So she went back then?” she asks, trying not to sound too curious. It’s not for her to say, maybe, but it is weird to her, though, that his mom would leave him to look after his Dad, when he’s clearly not ok as it is. Her mom might be totally type-A, and frustrate the hell out of her sometimes but she’s always been there, at least.

“Yeah. I mean she didn’t want to, but I told her I could handle it. I’m sure it’s weird being here anyway, in the house, when she and Dad are getting divorced.” He blushes slightly again, looks away. She doesn’t ask.

“I can’t believe I’m just telling you all this stuff you don’t wanna know, I’m sorry. God,” he says, sounding embarrassed.

She shakes her head. “It’s ok, I’m not gonna tell anyone. I wanna know your Dad’s ok.” She looks at him, hoping she’s not overstepping. “Are you?”

He looks taken aback by the question. “Yeah – I’m, good. I’m fine. It’s my Dad I’m worried about,” he replies, too quickly, the shadows under his eyes disagreeing with his statement.

She tries a different tack. Moose is exactly the same, he’ll never admit that he’s struggling. He never wants to look like he can’t handle things like a man, even though she tries to tell him he doesn’t have to, because he’s not an adult yet. It’s not even an obnoxious, 1950s-ish thing, because he’s never rude about it, but it took him ages to admit to her he might need a maths tutor because he was failing in ninth.

“Ever since it happened...I find it really hard to sleep. I keep having these horrible dreams. The other night, I was running, trying to catch up, and there were these birds...” She shakes herself. “Sometimes I don’t want to close my eyes, even. Even since I’ve been home I just stay up way too late, with my little lamp on, reading or watching some weird show on Netflix. I can’t help it,” she says looking out at the bleachers in the near-distance.

He doesn’t say anything for a second, and she can tell he is looking at the same thing.

“I’ve been seeing him. The shooter. When I know he’s not there.” He says suddenly, with a slight intake of breath. “You can’t tell anyone, Midge. _I_ haven’t told anyone. I have to stay alert. In case he comes back.”

She looks at him seriously. “If he comes back, God fucking _forbid,_ you’re not going to be able to do much when you’re dangerously underslept. I assume you’re drinking energy drinks to stay awake? That’s probably not helping the hallucinations.”

He looks at her irritably, and then looks back toward the bleachers. “I’m trying –“ he begins, then trails off.

He sighs. “I don’t want him to finish my Dad off,” he says, in a very small, worn-out voice that shakes very slightly.

She doesn’t really know to comfort him, like she would Moose – he’s a friend of her boyfriend’s, and that makes comforting gestures weird, in a way that it wouldn’t be with one of her friends on the squad. Well, she wouldn’t know at all how to comfort Cheryl, but she didn’t realise she even showed emotions other than disdain before that confrontation in the cafeteria.

“Archie, you’re –“ she starts, trying to find the right words. “You need to rest. You look exhausted.”

He shakes his head, not looking at her.

“I’m scared too, ok?” she says, more emotionally than she meant to. “I’m fucking _terrified_.”

He looks at her finally, looking scared and young, younger than he should. He sniffs. “I don’t know what to do. And I can’t talk about it with anyone, because they don’t – get it –“

She wishes she could give him some kind of physical comfort, but anything she can think of just feels awkward, and she wishes she didn’t feel like that. “Yeah – they sympathise. But they don’t really understand what it’s like to have come _that close_ –“ she gulps, finding herself tearing up, to her total irritation. She rubs the corners of her eyes with her thumb and index finger.

“I’m sorry –“ he begins, inexplicably.

“Don’t be,” she cuts him off. “Please just – look after yourself, ok? Don’t let the fear win. Don’t let that fucker win.”

He looks like he’s struggling to say something, but can’t, so he just nods. They lapse into silence for a while. She tries to aim her smoke away from him.

“So you think the posters are dumb then?” he says suddenly, almost-jokey, but not quite.

She drops her cigarette, stamps it out. She looks at him, and smiles in  a friendly way. “I get them –“ she begins slowly.

“But?” he breaks in, mouth quirking in what could almost be a wry smile.

“I’m just...not sure that...” she searches for the right words again, “It’s going to be useful if you’re looking for people to actually identify the guy.”

He half-laughs, unexpectedly. “They are dumb, aren’t they?”

She shakes her head. “No, they’re a good idea! Maybe not the best thought-out design, but I get why you made them,” she insists, genuinely. “I want that psychopath found and thrown in jail for the rest of his life, too.”

He looks at her darkly. “Or something.”

He sighs again, sounding more frustrated. “Sheriff Keller’s barely doing anything for it. As Kevin’s dad, I think he’s great, but he always just says he’s ‘working on it’ and it’s like, what the hell? What other big cases do you even have to investigate? As I remember, my friends and I had to solve the last one!” he bursts out, and then looks at her. “Maybe don’t tell people that though.”

She nods an agreement. So the rumours were true. Was that what made him more anxious? That and everything else? And that was _before_ all of this started.

“Yeah he’s interviewed me and Moose at the hospital. But he hasn’t told us anything new,” she informs him and he shakes his head.

“Sounds about right,” he says bitterly.

She gets a text, and pulls her phone out. Tina’s wondering where she is, and it’s lunch time.

“I gotta go to lunch, Tina’s waiting.”

She looks at him, still looking bitter and tired, and decides to chance it. Hoping he doesn’t take it the wrong way, she puts a comforting hand tentatively on his arm. He looks momentarily surprised at the unexpected contact, but she isn’t detecting anything that’s changed in the way he’s looking at her.

“Are you gonna be ok?”

He tries to smile. “I’m always ok.”

She keeps looking at him.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” He smiles a little more, at her raised eyebrow. “I’ll go straight home after school and take a nap, alright, Midge?”

She nods, smiling, and removes her hand. “Ok, Archie. You coming to lunch?”

“I’ll go in a few minutes. I just need some time not to be around everyone.” He says, and she nods.

“Tell me about it. See you around, then.”

“See you around.”

  
***

  
She finds the Vixens table, and slips into conversation with the girls. Sometimes Cheryl sits with them, sometimes she calls them a bunch of “brain-dead bimbo zombies” in practice and flounces off to places unknown. Today, she’s sitting with them. Ginger’s talking about some guy she hooked up with on the weekend, and Tina’s gossiping about people at school – all’s right with the world. She smiles and tries to play along, gasp in the appropriate places, pretend that it’s any other lunch like this, but her heart isn’t really in it.

“Ooh, Midge, you won’t know this, well you might have seen this, but there’s a new girl!” Tina giggles.

“Somehow I doubt she’s gonna try out for the Vixens,” Ginger snarks, and Tina laughs.

“Like I’d allow _that_ to happen.” Cheryl says, smirking. “God, look at her.”

“Is the goth look making a comeback?” Tina says, sniggering.

Midge feels a prickle at the back of her neck, like hairs standing on end, and shivers.

“Who is it?” she asks, zoning into the conversation again.

“Wednesday Adams over there, at the edge of the caf,” Ginger says, with a smirk.

Midge turns her head to look over where Ginger’s looking. At the edge of the room a short Asian girl in a leather jacket, a thin black choker and dark lipstick is reading a book, sitting on her own away from most of the fuller tables.

She looks up with eerie precision, and Midge catches her gaze across the cafeteria. She feels goosebumps raise sharply on her arms, and turns away, as the girls giggle.

“It’s a shame that emo kid with the hat, what’s his name? Jughead? Is already dating Betty, they’d be such a cute match!” Tina titters.

“I think he has enough on his plate, Patel, without your inane commentary,” Cheryl says sharply, suddenly, and Tina recoils.

Midge always feels somewhat on-edge around Cheryl, given that you never know what she’s going to defend or be offended by, and no one wants to say something she might suddenly decide is stupid in front of her. For all Midge had heard, that kid’s dad had been involved in covering up Jason’s murder, even if he hadn’t pulled the trigger himself, so she’d think Cheryl would dislike him the way she had previously. But then, she’d also heard the rumour that Jughead had been there to help pull her out of the frozen river. Well, all she knew was that you couldn’t predict Cheryl Blossom, so it was best to stay out of her way.

She sneaks another look at the new girl, who had resumed reading, and looks away.

“What’s her name, Ginger?” she asks.

Ginger shrugs like it’s unimportant in the extreme. “I don’t know. Something weird and old?”

Midge lets out a quiet ‘ha’ of laughter. “Something new and different for us then.”

Ginger pays this no attention. “Gloria, maybe? Who cares?”

“Angela?” asks Katy, in her high-pitched baby voice.

“Sally?” Laura counters.

“It’s not like it matters, anyway.” Cheryl says definitively.

Midge smirks and nods, submitting. But she can’t help thinking about how the new girl seems oddly familiar.  


***

  
She leaves the cafeteria only to bump into, again, Archie.

He looks worse again, more worried.

“Hey, I don’t want to waste any more of your time – but I have to ask you something.” He says, seriously.

She looks at him cautiously. They’d left their last conversation in a close, emotional place, sure but she hadn’t gotten the vibe he saw any of it as something more than friendly comfort. But then again, you had to be very careful with football boys.

“I mean, I know I talked to you a lot before, so I get it if you want to just tell me to go away – but I keep thinking about something you said, when you were talking about not sleeping.” He says quickly, and she can tell this is more worrying than any misplaced feelings she had feared.

She nods. He looks around, and back at her. “Do you have a few minutes we can talk in private?”

She gives him a concerned look, but agrees. They abandon the busy hallway, walking discreetly so they don’t seem like they’re walking together, and slip into an empty classroom on the lower level. She can afford to be a few minutes late to English, teachers have been going easy on her all day. The one upside to almost being killed.

“What? And why all the secrecy?” She asks, keeping her voice down even though they’re alone.

He looks around anxiously and looks back at her. “This is gonna sound crazy – I don’t even – “ he rubs his bloodshot eyes, and continues. “I swear, I know how it sounds. But I just have to – ask.”

She’s starting to feel a prickle of fear, inexplicably, at the coming question. Like she already knows what he’s going to ask about, though she doesn’t.

“Ok, ask me then,”

He looks at her, hesitates, and starts speaking. “You mentioned a dream – where you were running after someone, trying to catch up, and there were birds...I’m pretty sure I had that dream too. I was running after a girl with dark hair, and I thought it might be Veronica, maybe? But I don’t think it was...And there were these screeching black birds, and in the dream I saw one land on this old house, and it was just _so familiar_ – but when I woke up I couldn’t really remember what it looked like, y’know?”

He looks away, obviously embarrassed, because his ears are going red and the hair doesn’t help. “You think I’m crazy,” he says, sounding too tired to fight it.

But she doesn’t. She’s frozen in a weird combination of emotions – part of her wants to say, ‘so what? Maybe you’re just highly suggestible’, and part of her knows that might be true but it doesn’t mean he’s wrong about this, and part of her is dying to know when he had the dream – even if that could make it more real than she can deal with right now.

She goes with the third option. “I don’t, actually,” she says, and he brightens slightly. “Did you have this dream last night?” she asks slowly, looking at him with uncertainty. She doesn’t know if she wants him to say he didn’t, and then it’s less weird, or he did, and she knows _she’s_ not crazy.

He nods, seriously. “I fell asleep around two am. I woke up from it around five.”

She gasps and puts a hand to her mouth. It’s too weird.

“What?” he asks, looking concerned.

She shakes her head. “I had that dream, and I woke up at exactly 5:03am this morning. Then I got a text from Moose asking me if I could talk, because he’d just woken up from a dream that had freaked him out a bit.”

He gasps too, looking shocked. “I woke up at exactly 5:03 too, I know because I fell asleep with my phone next to me, and I checked it, that’s so weird...” he says, quietly.

“That’s the weird thing?” she counters.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. What does that even mean?”

She gets another flash of blood droplets, and her phone’s screen, showing a large 5:03am on the full colour screen.

Should she say it? She doesn’t really know him. But what, is he going to judge her somehow?

“The night... _It..._ happened, the retro night,” she takes a deep breath, shakes the flashbacks away. “I woke up at 5:03 am exactly and somehow I’d survived.”

He can’t help but gape at her. “Why do you think we all seem to have had the same dream, at the same time?”

She shakes her head. “I have no fucking clue – but I think we need to tell Moose about this.”

  
***

 

Midge is thoroughly exhausted by the end of the day, by the constant questions and looks – not to mention whatever the fuck is going on with what she heard from Archie. She just wants to get home – her mom made her promise she wouldn’t walk back and would wait for her to pick her up, and the lift is as at least appreciated, even if she could use the walk to clear her head.

But then she sees Kevin Keller, across the hallway, putting some things in his locker, and remembers she meant to talk to him.

“Hey, Kevin,” she says nicely, and accidentally surprises Kevin. She can’t tell if she’s imagining that he looks slightly guilty and nervous, as he looks at her.

“Hi, Midge,” and she’s not imagining the wary note in his voice.

She can’t help smiling more at this, and notices his eyes widen a little. “Calm down, you’ve done nothing wrong.”

He relaxes a little, nearly smiles. Still wary, though, seemingly.

“I just wanted to say – thanks,” she says simply, smiling. This seems to disarm him, looking like he this was the last thing he expected, and he smiles more easily.

“For what?” he asks, sounding pleased, but confused.

“For going to see Moose. I know he really appreciated it, and I know what’s it like to be stuck in a hospital bed alone. You didn’t have to, but you did and that was cool of you,” she says, honestly. It might be slightly awkward talking to him about Moose, but she approves – he’s a nice kid, cute, and smart from the way he answers questions  in class. Unafraid and unapologetically himself, and that takes courage. She’s almost jealous of that.

She can tell he’s processing her unexpected friendly overture, trying to think of what to say fast enough that it doesn’t get weird. He smiles, looking slightly awkward. “Oh, that’s..fine,” he says politely, and she resists the urge to laugh inappropriately.

He pauses and looks like he wants to say more, then does. “I’m glad he wasn’t hit. It’s a – “ he breaks off, like he doesn’t want to say the obvious word, _miracle_. She appreciates that. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m glad he’s ok. Both of you. Sorry, I didn’t mean, I’m _only_ glad he survived, obviously –“ He continues, starting to speak too quickly.

She can’t resist a grin. “Kevin, chill. Thanks for your concern, I didn’t assume you meant that,” she pauses, wondering whether to continue. “And we don’t really know each other. But you know him.”

His eyelashes flutter slightly. “I don’t know him that well,” he says quickly.

She drops her voice. “It’s ok, I’m not about to rip your throat out. He’s a good guy, that’s why _I_ like him, but I’m not his...jailer, or whatever. I’m just happy he had someone who cares about him visit him, when I couldn’t.”

He looks both subtly pleased and like he can barely comprehend what just happened. It’s in the happy quirk of his mouth, but the suspicion around his eyes – he looks so much like his Dad when he does that with his eyes, it’s the face he had on when questioning her at the hospital.

“Uh...thanks, I guess?” he says, smiling curiously. He hesitates, then says, “I know you’re probably sick of people saying this, but are you – are you ok? I know we don’t know each other, but Betty says I’m great at girl-talk,” she doesn’t miss the note of irony in his voice here, and feels unexpected pang of empathy, “and I’m here to...talk, if you need.”

She is taken aback by this genuine show of decency, and pauses for a moment. “I...people wanna know a lot, but I haven’t been asked that much, surprisingly,” she muses slowly.

He raises a well-trained eyebrow, seemingly genuinely shocked. “Really?”

She nods. “But thanks for asking. I’m ok – well, I’m getting there. And I might take you up on that sometime.”

He smiles, genuine. It’s a little goofy, his smile, but so is Moose’s and she likes it.

  
***

 

The girl with the dark lips gets home – such as she can call it that, the latest in a long string of ‘homes’ she’s lived in the last few years – and puts her bag down on her bed.

She does like her room here. They’re not always great, and she’s not complaining but it’s nice to have this cosy room with its big window looking on to the large willow outside.

“Is that you?” calls a voice from the hall.

“Yeah, come in.”

The door opens to reveal her aunt, holding a mug of tea. She’s wearing a dark beanie today, over her short blonde hair, and a smile that softens her sharp features.

“How was school?” she asks mildly.

“Thrilling.” She deadpans.

“Sounds it.” Her aunt deadpans back, and moves to sit on the end of the bed. “Did anything happen today, or are you just filled with the usual teenage ennui?” she asks gently, giving her a conspiratorial look.

The girl sighs. She can’t resist that look, it’s hard to keep secrets from. “Not really. It’s always a bummer, changing schools. Especially mid-semester. Same dumb jocks. Same bitchy cheerleaders making cracks at me, like they’re so original.”

Her aunt sighs. “Yeah, don’t I remember it. Goddamn Suzy Roberts thought she was so clever, making cracks about my clothes...but she got hers. They’ll get theirs,” she says, with dark humour, making the girl giggle.

Her aunt looks at her apologetically. “I’m sorry that we’re making you the new girl again– you know if there was any other way...”

She nods. “I know. Sorry, I’m not trying to be ungrateful.”

Her aunt puts the arm not holding a mug around her. “No, no, babe – you’ve been so good. You’re allowed to not be _thrilled_ all the time.”

She lies her head on her aunt’s shoulder for a moment. “Thanks, Hazel.”

“I got you, babe.” Hazel says.

She laughs at this, straightening up from Hazel’s shoulder.

“You alright here? Dinner’s prob in an hour-hour and a half.” Hazel asks, getting up.

She nods. “I’ve got some English homework to do,” she says and then is reminded of something. “Oh actually, Hazel? I don’t know anything about it, but some girl I hadn’t seen before came back to school today. Seemed like everyone was making a big deal about it...I think she might have been in hospital, I don’t know why...”

“You think it wasn’t just an illness?” Hazel says quickly, with an intensity that gives the girl a prickle of fear.

“I...I don’t know. Might be nothing. But I heard some kids talking about her about ‘surviving something’...thought I should mention it,” she says carefully. She doesn’t bother them with every inane piece of high school gossip she picks up, but she had the feeling she should let them know about this one. Her feelings are generally right.

The skin around Hazel’s eyes tightens slightly, but other than that her expression remains still. It’s only because she knows her so well that she even knows what to look for. Then she smiles again, small but comforting, even though it doesn’t fully reach her eyes.

“Thanks for letting me know. Keep an ear out about it, but –“ she flutters her eyelids quickly. “I don’t think – no.”

The girl nods. Her aunt mirrors it, almost unwittingly, then smiles wider this time and shakes her head quickly, as if to dispel the tension.

“You want some tea while you study?” Hazel asks.

“That’d be great, thanks,” she replies, with a small smile, getting her books out of her bag and putting them on her desk.

Her aunt turns to go and then pops her head back in.

“Oh, and Sabrina, can you feed him when you’re done? No stress, but you know how he whines when he doesn’t eat before we get to.”

Sabrina laughs and nods. “Sure. He’s spoiled anyway, though.”

Hazel laughs. “Don’t I goddamn know it,” she says, closing the door.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the ultimate cliffhanger, but pretty solid (although you probably guessed the new girl's identity before this chapter) i'm very very excited to be moving more into the plot! Hope you continue to like it :))
> 
> if you liked it, let me know, I'm always down to talk about it! and i realise i haven't been putting this in but you can hmu @ pantsaretherealheroes.tumblr.com if you just wanna talk about this ridiculous show that could really give into the ridiculous more!
> 
> chapter title from the song 'Whispers' by Passenger, it's a good one


	5. And You Know I'm Fine, But I Hear Those Voices At Night Sometimes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, to anyone still here, i appreciate it and sorry I took so long to get this here, but to make up for it this is a super long chapter, so hope you like it :)

Moose doesn’t like having to stay away from school. It’s a sign of how crazy and messed-up his life has been lately that he can even think that sentence, but there it is. Usually, any time away from having to be lectured on  _ The Great Gatsby  _ or algebra equations he doesn’t understand is solidly good, but this time is different. 

He keeps insisting he feels fine and he should just go back, and his parents just give him this look, like they’re afraid he’ll break if he leaves the house for more than a few minutes, and insist that he should go back when he’s fully ready to. Which doesn’t mean much to him – his physical injuries have almost totally healed, quicker than anyone thought, and he’s not as freaked out by what happened as everyone says he should be. What does that even mean? How does anyone know how he should react to something like this? The hospital brought a psychologist in to discuss how he was feeling about it, once, who said he should keep meeting with her – but she just wanted to tell him that he should be feeling scared or freaked out by it, or that it was ok to feel that maybe, and he didn’t like it so he didn’t book anymore appointments with her. 

Sure, it was kind of a freaky experience, seeing the guy walk up their window and pull out a gun – but it was over. They’d survived, hadn’t they? The most important thing was that he’d protected Midge without even thinking. The most important thing was that she wasn’t dead. He just wanted to get back to normal – as normal as usual, which meant forgetting to do his algebra homework, football practice, hanging out with the Bulldogs. Even letting Reggie heckle him for forgetting where his locker was that one time seems fun in comparison to staying here all day. 

He’s watching a rerun of some old show, something about a group of old ladies that he’d rather do double murder drills with Coach Clayton than admit he was liking, when he hears a knock at the door. 

It’s too early to be his parents, they’re not usually back till 5:30, but since he’s been home they’ve had a few drop-ins from concerned neighbours and family friend, wanting to know how he is. It’s weird though, because these aren’t people he knows super well. It just reminds him that things aren’t normal.

He opens the door and sees instead his girlfriend – and one of his teammates, and neither look very relaxed. 

“Hey, what are you doing here?” he asks jovially, feeling his joy at seeing them quickly fading at their expressions. “Did you get here at the same time, or...” he continues, confused, as the thought occurs. 

“Uh, no – we have to talk to you about something. It’s important,” Midge says, slightly awkward, sounding anxious. 

He looks at Archie for confirmation, and he nods, looking serious. 

Feeling more confused, he lets them into the living room. 

“Are your parents home?” Midge asks quietly, after hugging him.

“No, they’re uh, still at work...” he says slowly. “What’s going on?”

Midge and Archie look at each other, like they’re sharing a secret, and it makes him irrationally nervous. Surely, he’s got nothing to worry about there. That can’t be what they came to his house to talk about – they barely know each other! And it’s not like she’s into him, right? Besides, he’s dating someone else. Although knowing him –

“This is going to sound nuts, but you remember that dream you called me about this morning? With the running, and the girl, and the birds?“ Midge begins, carefully, and he can’t help sighing in relief.

“Oh thank God – I thought you were about to break up with me,” he says, grinning. 

“What?” Midge says, looking stunned.

“Why?” Archie adds, sounding completely confused. 

“You were so serious, and you guys never hang out together –“ he protests, feeling a bit stupid now. 

Midge laughs, breaking the tension. “You thought I was breaking up with you – for him? C’mon, Moose, really?” 

“Ok, thanks Midge,” Archie says, sounding slightly put-out. “But we still haven’t asked Moose about it?” 

She gives him an apologetic grin. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. Ok, so the dream?” she asks, more seriously.

He looks at them, and they both seem seriously interested. “It was just – I don’t even really remember it,” he lies, feeling kind of embarrassed now. Did she tell him he called her about it? What if he told anyone else on the team? He’d never hear the end of it – ‘Moose needs a night-light”, “Moose is afraid of the dark”, “Moose has scary dreams”.

He looks at Midge. “Why did you tell  _ him _ about it?” he asks, uncomfortable. He can’t understand it at all. 

She looks uncomfortable too. 

“Don’t worry about it, man, I’m not like, going to tell Reggie and them about it.” Archie jumps in, uncertainly, looking at him. “I’ve had my share of horrible dreams recently. Well, for a few months. No shame in it, dude, they’re...awful.” 

He feels like this should be more embarrassing, but he’s saying it so earnestly, he can believe it. Besides, he’s not really the mocking type. He nods at him, accepting it. 

“I told him about it because I wasn’t totally honest with you this morning,” Midge says finally, looking down. 

“About what?” 

She looks at him and sighs. “It’s gonna sound crazy, but – I had the same dream. I woke up from it and you called, saying you’d had this creepy dream.”

He looks at her in surprise. This was the thing they were so worried about? 

“Babe, I get that you might be creeped out that we  _ both  _ had bad dreams at the same time...” He begins, half-grinning. 

Her eyes go stormy, and she gives him a look. “No, not  _ bad dreams _ , the  _ same fucking one, _ Moose! The way you described it, the girl, the trees, the running, all of it was what happened in my dream. And it felt realer than usual.  _ Vivid. _ ” 

He feels goosebumps rise, but dismisses the possibility. Things like this just don’t – they don’t happen in real life. 

He thinks for a moment, considers her with concern. “Maybe...something about what happened...caused us to have similar dreams?” he says, and Midge looks frustrated, and then looks at Archie. Who come to think of it, he doesn’t really know why he’s here if Midge is freaked out by that weird coincidence. 

“No Moose – she doesn’t mean similar. She means the same. I know, because I had the dream last night, too. It was a total fluke that I even realised she had it too,” Archie says, seriously, and Moose can tell he at least believes it to be totally true. 

“How can either of you know that? You can’t tell what dreams you had – you’re taking parts of the dream that match –“ he says, trying to sound reasonable but feeling a thread of anxiety about it he can’t really explain. 

“I remember it really well – I never remember my dreams this well. They never seem  _ this real _ when I’m awake. I was running after a girl, and she was short and dark-haired, and we were next to the woods.” Archie continues, defiantly. “There were birds screeching up above, a lot, and an old house – not big, one storey with this big old tree next to it, and this black bird landed on the roof –“ 

He glances at Midge, somehow hoping she’ll realise this wasn’t the dream she had, but she’s nodding in agreement.  The feeling of anxiety has increased, making his heart beat faster. It’s vivid to him too, but it can’t be – “Stop – that’s not – that’s not possible, Arch,” he says, suddenly, surprising even himself. 

“Thought you didn’t remember it?” Midge says, but not meanly. 

There’s a silence

“I – I need to sit down.” He says, rubbing his eyes. 

He does, and when he opens his eyes again, they’re still there looking at him concernedly. It wasn’t some kind of weird painkiller after-effect hallucination. 

“So,” he says, slowly. “We all had the same, creepy, confusing vivid dream. Ok. Does that  _ really  _ mean anything?” He says, hopefully. 

“Well it doesn’t mean nothing?” Archie says, sounding surprised. He looks at Midge. “You should probably tell him the other thing, now he’s sitting.”

He looks at Midge with renewed anxiety. What can be weirder than this? 

She scrunches her eyes up, like she always does when she’s stressed, and opens them. “Ok, so bear with me, this is a bit freaky, but it’s ok,” she says calmly, though it does nothing to calm his nerves. 

“Just tell me,” he says, resigned. 

“I woke up at 5:03am. I think, given when you called me, that’s roughly when you woke up. It’s when Archie woke up too,” she says briskly, and looking away for a moment. He senses she’s about to say the big thing, and braces. 

She looks back, and she looks haunted. The way she did the morning he saw her still alive at the hospital, and she ran to him, still wearing her bloodstained clothes. 

“That is the  _ exact  _ time I woke up from the attack. I know because I had my phone right beside me.” 

His jaw drops. 

There’s silence. 

“So what does it mean?” he asks, even though he knows they can’t answer it.

Archie shrugs. “No idea...so what do we do about it, Midge?” 

“How should I know?” she says defensively. She pauses. “I don’t know. Does anyone recognise the house with the tree? I’ve never seen it, but Archie said it was familiar.” 

“I said it was familiar, but that doesn’t mean I know where it is? I could ask my Dad, but I’m not sure what reason I could use. He won’t believe I’ve just decided to become interested in random town architecture. Especially if it’s not even here.” Archie replies, sinking into a chair. 

Moose thinks on it. It did seem familiar, now he’s thinking about it. He closes his eyes and focuses on the image of the house from the dream. It’s still vivid, which is weird enough. Vivid enough to see the number  _ 61  _ on the letterbox. 

He opens his eyes and they’re both staring at him. “I think I know where it is. Or some part of it. I remember the number of the house now. I think it is in this town. I have a feeling.”

Archie nods. “Cool.”

“Ok well it’s not much to go on, but you should try and find that house. Look up Google Maps or something, there aren’t that many 61s in town.” Midge tells him, matter-of-factly. “I’m going to do some research, I guess. And I want to know what this new girl’s deal is, because she got here right in the middle of this.”

“New girl?” He asks, confused. “Veronica?” 

“Newer.” Archie explains. “Kind of goth. What should I do then?”

Midge looks at him. “I guess, if you can try and find out if your Dad knows the house, but be subtle.”

Archie nods. “Right.” 

“If you don’t get to that – can you try and find out if any of your friends have had the dream, or anything like that? But again, subtly.” 

Archie nods again. “I’m not – sure I’m great at doing that? But I’ll try.” 

Moose can’t help grinning a little, in the face of it all. 

“I’ll try and ask mine, without giving anything away. Ok, we all set on the plan?” Midge says, with a glint in her eye.  
  


***

  
It’s not as easy to focus in class now, Midge is finding. Not that she was always the most attentive of students before – but now she can’t stop zoning out, thinking about everything going on. 

Luckily, her teachers are going fairly easy on her, special consideration and all. But after spending a whole period of English basically oblivious to the lesson, she decides she needs to get it together.

As she walks into Bio though, all resolutions to not be distracted go out the window. The new girl is sitting at the back of the class. 

Midge didn’t have Bio yesterday, and hasn’t noticed if the new girl was in any classes before this. She feels like she would have though. Even though she’s clearly trying to sink into the background, she has some kind of presence. 

“Ah Midge, a word?” Mr Bhatra asks, and she shakes her head slightly and turns to look at the biology teacher. 

He gives her a kindly, if slightly pitying look. “We started a new project a few days ago, and I would usually say just join a pair, but the numbers were uneven in your absence. Since then I’ve been partnering our new student, but if you could pair up with her that would be –“

“Great, yeah,” Midge finishes genuinely. 

Mr Bhatra smiles. “We’re not too far ahead, but just ask me if you have any questions, ok?”

She nods, smiling. “Sure, thanks.”

She smiles at Tina as she passes, who tries to signal her to sit with her. “Wait for me after?” she mouths, and Tina nods, frowning. 

In her absence, Tina’s had to pair up with Eric Riley, who always breathes loudly through his mouth – so she can understand why she’s not thrilled, but it’s not exactly her fault she wasn’t here. Or that she’s been paired up with this new girl Tina’s already decided to hate. 

New girl’s goth look hasn’t been toned down since yesterday. Midge kind of respects her commitment to a look. She gives Midge a quick appraising look as she stops at her table, but doesn’t say anything. 

“I’m your new lab partner for this project, apparently. Midge,” she says, with a small smile. Somehow, she doesn’t think going full cheerleader on her is going to endear her.

“That’s your name?” the new girl says, sounding less mocking and more surprised. Still she’s taken aback slightly by the bluntness. 

“Uh, yeah,” she says casually. 

“Sorry, that was – rude. I’ve just never heard anyone called that before,” the new girl continues stiltedly.  

“Yeah, old family name apparently. Parents around here are weird,” she says, half-joking. “So, what’s yours then?”

The girl pauses, like she’s surprised to be asked. “Sabrina.” 

Midge smiles wider. “That’s not exactly modern, either. Parents big Audrey Hepburn fans?”

Sabrina looks like she’s heard it before, but is trying to seem unimpressed, even as a corner of her mouth tugs up in what might even be a smile. 

“Not exactly, no,” she says coolly, and doesn’t expand on it. 

In the awkward silence that follows, Midge wonders why she even wanted to talk to this girl. She’s odd – she’s putting out a disaffected cool vibe, but she actually cared enough about offending someone she didn’t know to apologise, and quickly. Real disaffected cool doesn’t care who it hurts, and she should know, having on the vixens for two years, especially under the dictator-like captaincy of Cheryl. 

“So, can you explain what we’re doing here? I’m kind of playing catch up,” she tries again. 

Sabrina looks at her, lips pursed, then opens her notebook and begins to explain.

She’s not a bad lab partner, though she isn’t very interested in talking more than she has to. Which is annoying, because also keeps looking like she wants to say something, but is thinking the better of it. 

If she could only figure out the way to crack her, then...what? 

There’s no reason her appearing at school just after the attack should be anything more than a coincidence – and yet she can’t forget the feeling she got before Tina pointed her out yesterday. Like she knew what she’d see before she turned around. The eerie way Sabrina looked up right on cue, like she could tell exactly when Midge was going to turn around. 

But sitting next to her is not so creepy. She just seems like any socially-averse new kid. Even with the dark makeup, she’s not creepy. It kind of suits her, actually. Up close, she has quite delicate, pretty features, even though they are constantly twisted into either disaffection or irritation. Midge wonders what it would take to make her smile.

She sees Sabrina give her another sideways glance and decides to chance it. “You can ask me, you know.” 

Sabrina doesn’t look up from the textbook. 

“Ask you what?” she drawls. 

Midge looks at her. “Whatever you’re dying to ask me about where I’ve been since you got here. Everyone else has.”

Sabrina studies the textbook avidly and doesn’t say anything. 

Whatever internal battle she was fighting about learning what she clearly wants to know, and keeping her distance as she clearly wants to do, she clearly decides in favour of the former and looks at Midge with distant curiosity.

“Why were you away?” she asks quietly. “Why does anyone care?” she winces at the second question, but doesn’t take it back. 

Midge almost wants to laugh. Her bluntness doesn’t seem designed to wound, like Cheryl. It’s more like she doesn’t know how else to express herself. It’s a new, weird experience, but it’s nicer than the pity and hungry curiosity of everyone else. 

She looks down, wondering how to phrase it. “I was...in hospital for a few days.” begins, quietly.

“Why?” Sabrina asks immediately, more matter-of-fact than sympathetic. 

She looks down at her book again, wondering if this was the best idea. But it’s the most she’s gotten Sabrina to talk this lesson, and maybe if she gains her trust, she can ask a few things herself. 

“I – I don’t want to freak you out, but maybe you should know if you don’t,” she continues. Sabrina’s face doesn’t betray a flicker of fear, but Midge can tell she’s interested. “There’s some nutjob running around with a hood and a gun. He shot someone in town, and about a week or so ago he tried to shoot my boyfriend and I...” she gasps slightly, trailing off. Her phone’s illuminated screen swims to the front of her mind, the sticky plastic of the seats, the sound of the birds overhead – 

She realises she’s gripping the edge of the textbook, and that there’s a hand half-over hers. Sabrina looks pale under her makeup, and there’s a worried, even remorseful look in her eyes. And somehow, curiosity. 

They don’t say anything for a moment, though Sabrina doesn’t break eye contact. Then just as quickly, Sabrina withdraws her hand. “I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “Bet you’re sick up of people bringing it up.” 

Midge nods slowly. Something in the slightly bitter way she says it makes her think that she’s not morbidly curious about tragedy, but has actively experienced it. Her remorse for asking seems much realer. 

“It’s – I’ve just got to get back to normal.” Midge says, trying to brush it off. 

“If you can,” Sabrina says, almost like she only meant to think it.

“Do you think I can’t?” Midge replies, bristling.

Sabrina looks at her, wide-eyed. “I’m sure you can.” 

Midge nods, and there’s a silence as she reads in the textbook for the next step. 

“Just...as someone who’s moved around a lot, sometimes a new normal is something you just have to deal with. It’s not always bad, either.” Sabrina continues, sounding hesitant. 

Midge processes this for a few seconds. Then she looks at Sabrina, who doesn’t look up. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Sabrina says, semi-casually. “So, what do we have to do next?”

Midge smiles a little more, and looks up the textbook. 

After class, when they’re packing up, Midge impulsively decides to invite Sabrina to lunch. 

Sabrina looks uncomfortable, and busies herself packing her bag. “That’s really, uh, nice but I’m ok just sitting outside. I don’t really like the cafeteria. You really don’t to feel like you have to –“

“I’m not, though. You’re new, it might be a good way to make friends?” Midge tries. 

Sabrina purses her dark lips again, looking distant and little sad. “I’m not really planning to make friends here. Sorry,” she says briefly, and walks off. 

And she’d thought she was getting somewhere. Well, fine then, goth girl, have it your way. It was a stupid idea anyway.  
  


***

  
Tina is waiting for her after class, like she said, but she doesn’t look happy. 

“Since when are you so friendly with the corpse bride?” she says, sounding unimpressed. 

“I’m not?” Midge says, feigning confusion. “I literally only met her a hour ago, so.” 

Tina rolls her eyes. “You certainly looked pretty close,” she says, with a meaningful glare. 

There are better things that she could be doing than soothing Tina’s ego, especially about something like this, and part of her wants to just tell her she’s being annoying – but she overcomes that impulse, and smiles at her. 

“C’mon really? Girl’s totally weird. She barely talked to me all class. In fact, she actively told me she didn’t want any new friends, and just like, walked off. Totally weird.” Midge says with performative snarkiness. It’s not like she’s not annoyed about what happened, but she can feel that she’s being bitchier more for Tina’s benefit than hers. 

Tina brightens. “Really? What a freak.” 

“Really.” Midge confirms, smirking, even though the word hits like it was meant for her. “I know it sounds dumb, but I’m annoyed I wasn’t here when we started picking partners. It’d be more fun with you.” 

“Oh my god, I knooow. I’m so glad you’re back though.” Tina says, beaming. “You would not fucking believe what I have to put up with from Eric, though, God he’s the worst...”

Midge slips back into the easy patter of Tina’s rant about Eric. This is fine, all she needs to do is figure out the dreams, and it will probably be fine. She doesn’t need to know more about that loner goth girl.  
  


***

  
Sitting in algebra, though, Moose has to admit that as much as he’s happy to be out of the house, he doesn’t give a shit about whatever he’s supposed to be learning here. 

He did some searching for the house on google maps, but he couldn’t quite find it. It’s weird, cause he has this feeling like he knows around where it is, but he can’t quite find it on there. 

And people keep wanting to congratulate him and ask him about what happened, and it’s kind of cool but it also makes him think about waking up in the car alone, and trying to remember what happened and why he was covered in blood, and then he just wants to run away from whoever’s talking to him. 

And then thinking about it makes him want to run away more. Chas, the team’s halfback, makes some kind of joke that’s supposed to make him feel better, and two minutes later he puts his hand up for a hall pass and pretends he wants to go to the bathroom. 

He’s not intending to leave, just maybe get some air, when he realises he doesn’t want to go back to class. It’s too small, too filled with people and he can barely think in there. 

“You...ok?” someone says, and opens his eyes and realises he’s slumped against a wall in the hallway. He doesn’t even remember doing it, really. 

Kevin is a few lockers down from him, giving him a worried look. 

“Uh...yeah, I’m ok,” he says, feeling embarrassed.

“You don’t seem ok?” Kevin says, walking up to him. “What are you doing out here?” 

He doesn’t say it like he’s accusing him of anything, which Moose appreciates. 

He looks away, feeling dazed, and back at Kevin. “I – I have a hall pass. I needed some air.”

Kevin looks at him curiously. “But you didn’t get as far as outside?”

He looks at the end of the hallway. “I’m working on it.”

Kevin smiles at this, unexpectedly. Moose forgets what he was going to say.

“I have to get out of here. You wanna come?” he asks impulsively.

Kevin looks surprised. “Like, skipping?”

“Yes, like skipping,” he repeats, starting to smile. “Can’t break school rules?”

Kevin gives him a look. “No, I’m in.”

He smiles, actually, for what feels like the first real time today. “Let’s get out of here then.”  
  


***

  
It’s nice, Moose thinks in the car, just hanging out with someone who’s not on the team. Not that he doesn’t like doing that, obviously, but it’s a different kind of thing. It’s the same with Midge, who he loves hanging out with, as a friend and a girlfriend – but times like this remind him there is so much more out there that he could be experiencing. 

It’s been more awkward than this when they’ve bumped into each other before. Not much talking, awkward movements to get away. He didn’t even really think Kevin would say yes when he asked, but he’s glad he did. 

He keeps glancing over quickly at him and back. He can feel Kevin doing the same thing, maybe he’s as surprised to be here as Moose is to have him here. 

“So where are we going, then? Any plans?” Kevin asks.

“Not – really,” he replies, stretching the vowels out. “Is it cool if we just drive around for a bit? I can’t go home yet.”

“Yeah, that’s – that’s fine,” Kevin says warmly, and he looks away from the road a moment to look at him. Kevin catches his eye this time, and smiles in that way of his – slightly teasing, but warm. He can’t help smiling too.

They weren’t ever anything to each other, really. It might have been, but what stopped it was so bizarre and horrific that it was hard to get it started again. Not to mention, Kevin had made it pretty clear he had no intention of it happening again. Which was fine, because he hadn’t been looking for anything serious, anyway. 

He still feels weird driving the car, even though it doesn’t feel different. It feels like the same, but that’s just as weird. They cleaned it up while he was in the hospital, and then his Dad got it released from the police impound, as the police had apparently gotten everything they needed from it, so he could drive it to school on his first day back, like normal. 

He should have asked if Kevin was ok to drive around in it, but he didn’t say anything before they got in, and he doesn’t seem uncomfortable. He definitely has a stronger stomach than you’d think, even when they found that body, and Moose had nightmares about those unseeing, pale eyes for weeks. 

“Hey, pass me your phone,” Kevin says lightly, breaking through his thoughts. “I wanna see if you have any good music on your phone.’

He feels himself grinning at this, the anxious knots untwisting in his stomach. 

“Hey, all my music is good, thanks, Keller.” he says, passing his phone over with one hand. 

Kevin laughs. “That’s what they all say, and yet...”

Kevin’s silent, scrolling the music library. “I didn’t think you were so into old electronica playlists? I figured you for more current bro-EDM.” 

He chuckles, surprised. “Yeah, I mean, I don’t mind it. But I found this blog that has these playlists, and they’re a few years old but a lot of them are solid. And I just import them into my iTunes. They’re good for working out.”

Kevin chuckles too. “Why am I not surprised?”

He puts on a frenetic song with a piano opening. 

“You know this one?” he says, surprised. 

“I’m surprised you do,” Kevin replies, sounding happy about it. “I get into some pretty obscure YouTube music wormholes when I study.” 

He grins out at the road, watching the trees pass by outside, and lets the music blast any bad thoughts out of his mind. 

_ I stole the keys to the sky _

_ And we’ll leave this place for the final time.  _

*

“But the world is so big, and there’s so many characters! And there are so many cool battles! And dragons, Kevin!” Moose protests, grinning all the same. 

Kevin rolls his eyes. “Yeah, not to forget all the rape. Or the fact that the majority of the queer characters have been killed off, one being forced to renounce this before he died? Look, I get why your football bros love it – but it’s 2017, must we keep acting like it’s prestige television?” 

He’s about to rebut Kevin’s point when he realises he doesn’t know where he’s driven them. He wasn’t even really aiming for anywhere but he doesn’t even really remember what streets he took to get here. 

And then he sees it. 

“Shit!” he says, braking and pulling off the road into an empty spot. Kevin swears. 

“Ok, Baby Driver, warn me next time? What is it?” he says irritably. 

He sighs and looks at Kevin. “This is going to sound nuts, and you  _ cannot  _ tell anyone...”

Kevin raises a sceptical eyebrow, but says nothing.

“Do you see that dark blue house, across the road? With the big tree?” he says quietly. 

“Yeeeah...” Kevin says, plainly confused. 

He looks out at it and then back at Kevin. “I don’t think I’ve ever been here. But I swear to God, I just had a dream about that house. Not a similar house. That one exactly.” 

Kevin looks at him with worry. 

“I’m not saying you didn’t...but even if you did,” he says carefully, looking confused. “You had a dream about this place. So?” 

He looks away, frustrated because he knows how it sounds. He’s not usually the kind of person who decides to stop by a place because it looks vaguely like something he had a dream about. But that’s the thing – it didn’t just  _ kind of  _ look like this place. It was it.

“I know how it sounds, Kevin –“ Moose begins, and looks back at him. “But it wasn’t just – it feels important. I need to know who lives there.” 

Kevin takes this in, and nods. “Ok, I’ll just go with this for now. What’s your plan? Are you going to just knock on their door in the middle of the day? They’re probably not home, Moose,” he says, reasonably, but it gives Moose an idea.

“Yeah, probably not...” he says, and opens the door, to Kevin’s protests. 

“What are you doing – Moose, come on, don’t –“ Kevin says, sounding more panicked, as he gets out of the car too. 

“You don’t have to come, but I’m going over there,” he tells Kevin determinedly. 

Kevin pinches the bridge of his nose anxiously, and opens his eyes. “It’s just it could be dangerous –“ he says, and breaks off when Moose starts to cross the road. 

“Ok, we knock on the door, if they’re not there, can we go?” Kevin follows, sounding stressed. 

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” he replies, focusing on the house. 

Kevin makes a derisive noise that implies he really doesn’t think so, but keeps up with him. 

He reaches the mailbox, noting the number 61 on it, and feels oddly pumped. He wasn’t wrong. 

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” Kevin whispers hopefully, looking irritable. 

He gives Kevin a look. “I haven’t knocked yet. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Kevin gives him a deeply sceptical look. “Seriously? There’s an actual serial killer on the loose, and you’re saying that?”

He considers this briefly. “Ok, sure, but we’ll barely be here. We’ll knock, and then we’ll go, ok?”

Kevin sighs. “Ok, fine. But if you start trying to explore around...”

“I won’t,” he says, and it’s not really a lie. He hopes there is someone home so he can talk to them, but if he has to look around for answers, well. Hopefully there will be someone there. 

The house is old, painted blue but up close the paint is cracking. One story, shabbier than most of the houses in this neighbourhood. Yet kind of sweet, in a way, but certainly uninviting from a distance. The big willow next to the house made it darker than expected on the porch.

He goes to knock and Kevin throws out a hand. “Wait, wait, wait –“ he says suddenly, looking at Moose.

“What?” he whispers, slightly annoyed. 

“What are you going to say?” Kevin says, and he has to mentally admit he makes a good point.

“I don’t know – I’ll just say hi...” he says, and Kevin raises an eyebrow.

“ – and I’ve been having dreams about your house, mind if I look around?” Kevin finishes for him, looking anxious.

He stares at Kevin and can’t think of anything to say. “Well – what do you think then?” he finally gets out, put out.

Kevin sets his mouth and seems to think for a moment. “Fall back on small-town charm. You live round here and you just wanted to welcome them.”

Moose smiles. “That actually makes sense. Nice work.”

Kevin rolls his eyes, but can’t hide that he’s pleased. “Well if you insist on dragging me into your impulse driven schemes...”

He puts his hand up to knock and looks at Kevin before he does. Kevin nods. 

He knocks. 

He listens for any noise inside. 

He thinks there might be music playing inside – something he knows? Something familiar, but he can’t place it without it being louder. 

“Ok, well I guess no one’s –“ Kevin says hopefully, but then they hear the sound of footsteps and the door opens. 

In the doorway is a young-looking, small Asian woman, wearing a paint-stained old shirt and loose, bright-coloured pants. She’s the kind of person who could be anywhere from her late twenties to early forties, but if Moose had to guess he’d say she was in her thirties.

She looks at them somewhat suspiciously. “Can I help you?” she says, guardedly. 

Moose freezes for a second. “Uh, we – live nearby and I noticed that you’d moved in recently, and my mom, uh, said I should go and welcome you to the neighbourhood. We don’t get new people all that often here, so.” He says, smiling. 

The woman smiles a little at this, still considering them both with her eyes. 

“Why aren’t you in school right now?” she says, without rudeness, like she’s genuinely curious. 

He doesn’t falter, surprising himself. “I’ve been out of school for a bit due to illness – well, injury – and I think my Mom wanted me to get out of the house a bit, to be honest.” 

Kevin looks proud, when he glances back at him. 

The woman smiles more. “So your brother here is helping you with your injury?” she says, looking at Kevin.

Kevin shakes his head quickly. “No, no, we’re not – “ he stumbles out until Moose cuts him off. 

“No he’s just a – friend of mine. Took this period off to visit me. It was very nice of him to agree to come.” He says with a grin. 

Kevin gives him a subtle side-eye. “Yeah, well I had a free study period,” he says politely, with a small smile. “Anyway, we just wanted to say hi, sorry if we’re interrupting your day –“

The woman looks at both of them warmly, seeming to relax. “Psh, just doing some painting. It can wait. It’s so lovely, to get a greeting like this, boys, really – my wife is so cynical about small town people, but this is very  _ Gilmore Girls _ , I love it!” She laughs. “I won’t ask you to water my plants, though.” 

Kevin’s expression goes almost starry-eyed with admiration, and he smiles at her. “Well as long as I don’t get trapped in the sprinklers, I’m happy to!” he jokes. “I’m Kevin.”

Moose watches the exchange without a clue what they’re referencing, but keeps grinning anyway. So much for not bothering the residents, Kevin.

She puts out a thin arm to shake his hand, beaming. “Zelda.”

He recognises the song, suddenly. “Is that The Killers? I love this song.”

She turns to him and grins, looking pleased. “Yeah, me too. It’s actually this whole space-themed playlist, I made it for this piece I’m working on.” 

“That sounds awesome,” he says, genuinely. For some reason, he wants to see that painting now, and hear the playlist. It’s not even an attraction thing – she is definitely attractive, but it’s more like she’s just,  _ cool _ .

He kind of understands why Kevin was so bowled over now. “I’m Moose,” he says, holding his hand out. 

Zelda raises an eyebrow, smiling, but doesn’t comment. “Nice to meet you, Moose,” she says, smiling until her hand touches his. Suddenly she pulls her hand away, looking surprised.

“Uh, static electricity,” She says, quickly. “So, you two go to the high school nearby, right?” 

He nods, curious. 

“Cool, cool.” She says, vaguely. “Well, thanks for coming – feel free to drop over anytime,” she says, smiling but he can tell she’s trying to cut the conversation off. 

“Yeah, nice to meet you, Zelda.” Kevin replies. 

She smiles at him. “Same to you both. Hope to see you around...” she says, and they nod politely and take it as their cue to leave. 

Once they get back to the car, Kevin looks at him and says, “Well, that was weird.”

He looks at Kevin in agreement. “It was, right?”

They don’t say anything for a moment. 

“Like she was totally friendly, and then she shook your hand and totally clammed up.” Kevin says, sounding mystified.

He nods. “And she shook your hand before that, so...”

Kevin considers it. “Was she in your dream?”

He’s surprised by the question, for some reason. “No, I don’t think so...” he falters, remembering the girl running. “No, there was someone – I didn’t know them – but it wasn’t her. Well, I don’t think so...”

Kevin looks at him, worried again, but also curious. “So what did we learn, then?”

He sighs. “I – I don’t even know what I wanted to learn. Or how I would even ask that.” He looks at Kevin, seriously. “Except for that handshake, I might have thought I was building it up too much. But I don’t know, it was weird. I can’t drop it yet.” 

Kevin nods. “Well, I believe you.” 

He smiles, surprised. “Thanks, Kevin.” 

And he didn’t even know about the dream-sharing yet. But maybe he would believe it. Not right now, though.   
  


***

  
Sabrina decides to eat outside at lunch. She doesn’t feel like dealing with the popular kids looking over and giggling at her today. 

Also, she won’t have to see the girl from Bio. 

She keeps thinking about the girl’s face when she said she didn’t want to make any new friends. It’s not like it was a lie though – she’d made that mistake in the past, and then they’d had to move again. It’s just easier to stop pretending this will be the place where it’s going to be different, and that they’ll stay here.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel guilty about it. The girl – Midge, she remembers, of all the weird small town names you could have – was some kind of cheerleader, pretty, popular enough, but had still been really friendly. 

She’s been to a few high schools around the country now, and even though being new can make people want to claim you for their group, it’s rare that popular kids are so genuinely welcoming and friendly. Especially cheerleader-types. 

She sets down on an empty table, making sure she’s far enough from anyone else before she puts her bag down. 

She puts her earphones in and looks around at the oval, and the bleachers. Same old, same old. There’s a lot about this town that feels familiar – almost too familiar, as if an idyllic photo of 1960s Americana came to life – but she can’t shake the feeling she’s missing something. 

Not to mention, what she’d felt when she touched Midge’s arm in Bio. Well, what she might have felt – she was definitely going to check first. It had been weird, though. 

And, whatever menace was going around hurting people. That was something she hadn’t seen in any of her previous homes. If it was just an ordinary deranged psycho, that is. 

She looks around at the only other table with people at it, a few tables down from her, and accidentally catches the eye of one of the people at the table. 

She means to look away, but he doesn’t. It’s not unusual for guys to stare at her, when she’s new so often, and she has a very distinct look. But this isn’t that – it’s not the interested-and-checking her out look. He looks surprised almost, even mystified, that he’s seeing her. 

A dark haired girl beside him says something she can’t hear, and he looks away, brushing a hand loosely through his red hair. 

She looks down immediately, trying to figure out what was so unsettling about it.  He’s too far away to really tell, but he didn’t look – happy. Something in the way he looked at her was tired – scared, even. 

“Fuck,” she says, to herself, grabbing her bag and getting up again. 

It’s not her problem. It’s nothing to do with her.

She decides to get something from her locker. But because this day wasn’t already long and terrible enough, she finds one of the jock-group has separated from its mob to lean up next to the locker next to hers and smile smugly at her.

“Where’s the fire?” he asks, and she realises she’s searching her locker a bit intensely for her pencil case, but she ignores him. 

“So, you’re new right?” he tries again, just as confidently. 

“Well spotted,” she snaps, and mentally curses herself for reacting so easily. She’s usually better at it, but she’s already frazzled. 

This only spurs him on. She knew it would. He’s not the first jock to think he should try and hit on the new girl, whether she wants it or not.

“You’re hard to miss,” he says, smirking. She’s trying not to look at him directly, but she can just tell, peripherally. It’s in his voice. 

She slams the door shuts and attempts to walk away, but he falls into step next to her. “I’m Reggie. You’ve probably heard of me.” 

She enjoys completely ignoring this comment, for the slight embarrassment she feels off him from it.

“C’mon, at least tell me your name?” He says, a laugh in his voice, and stops ahead of her. “I think we’d get along well.”

She stops and looks at him irritably. He grins widely, like he’s sure he’s cracked it now. He’s not unattractive, she’ll admit, in an Abercrombie-model kind of way, but his smug expression makes him that for her. She’s met enough of these guys, who act like you should be kissing the ground under their feet because they’re good-looking and win small town football games. They’re either weirdly interested in the challenge and are mad when she won’t play along, or they decide straight off that she’s a freak. Either way, it leads nowhere good. 

“Maybe, my name is What Makes You Think I’m At All Interested?” she says coldly, fixing him with a stare. She’s perfected it pretty well, and it even wilts his smile a little. “Maybe, you could take yourself out – you clearly think you’re pretty great. Maybe, if it’s a good date, you could then go fuck yourself?”

Some people that are clustered at the lockers break into giggles and whispers, and he glares at them, looking embarrassed. 

She takes the opportunity to shake him off, flicking him the bird as she does. 

***

Midge’s phone buzzes as she’s holding it, aimlessly scrolling Facebook. It’s just her and Tina, leaving class after the last period of the day, talking and half-paying attention to their phones. 

“You wanna come over tonight? We can walk home together if you want,” Tina asks, looking up from her phone. 

She’s still paying attention to the text she’s received – a short one from Moose, to both her and Archie, saying he has some news and they should meet up. 

“Midge?” Tina asks again, with a hint of irritation. 

She looks up. “Sorry – uh, Moose wants to give me a lift home. I feel like I should, he’s been having a tough day back. Are you ok to get home by yourself?” 

“Sure. I’ll walk with Ginger and Katie, or something.” Tina says, frowning slightly. 

She smiles at Tina, trying to get her to smile too. “But, I can probably hang out – after four, maybe? If you still want me to drop by.”

Tina rolls her eyes but breaks into an inadvertent smile. “Sure. If you want.” 

Midge beams. “Course I do.”   
  


***

  
Even though she told Tina that Moose was going to pick her up, she doubles back and takes an alternate route to Moose’s house on foot, by herself. The girls on the team haven’t been walking home without at least one other girl since her attack, apparently. Privately, she thinks she’s probably fine because lightning’s already struck her with regards to the ‘serial killer’, and if he wanted her dead, surely he would have tried harder?

It’s the kind of dark gallows-humour thought she doesn’t mention to the girls on the squad, or Moose. Cheryl would probably understand the humour, but they’re not exactly close friends. 

She doesn’t know why she didn’t just say she was going to Moose’s. But Tina might have gotten that expression, where she says she’s fine but Midge can tell she’s annoyed and she’s going to have to figure it out later. It’s just easier this way, maybe. 

She reaches Moose’s house and knocks. 

He opens the door. “Did you walk here? I could’ve driven you, babe,” he says, sounding surprised. 

She shivers slightly. “That’s – I needed the walk anyway,” she covers. She hasn’t been in the car since – well, it happened, and she doesn’t even know how they got it clean and driveable so quickly. She doesn’t like thinking about going back in it. 

She comes in and kisses him. He wraps his arms around her waist, and smiles, looking tired.

“I’m so happy to see you, you don’t even know,” he says, fondly. 

She looks at him, with a small smile. “You too. I thought you might eat with us, or the team at lunch but I couldn’t see you in the caf?”

He looks at her, still smiling, but something anxious in his eyes. “That’s kinda part of the news –“

They’re interrupted by another knock at the door, and Moose goes to get it, leaving her very curious. 

Moose leads Archie in, and she nods at him. 

“I can’t stay long, I’ve gotta get home and help my Dad with dinner,” Archie starts, looking as anxious as ever. “So, what’s going on Moose?”

“And are your parents home?” She adds. 

Moose shakes his head. “No, they’re not back from work till 5:00. But guys – I found the house, today.”

Hearing this gives her a chill of excitement. 

“The  _ house  _ house?” Archie asks, looking excited. 

“The _house_ _house._ ” Moose confirms, grinning, and she rolls her eyes.

“Did you – learn anything about it?” she asks, attempting to get back to useful conversation. 

He nods. “I actually met the woman who lives there – she was really cool, I think she’s an artist, or something? Kevin didn’t want to go in at first but he  _ loved  _ her –“ he says, and then stops abruptly, looking slightly guilty. 

“Oh, did you skip class with Kevin?” she asks, casually. It doesn’t really bother her, usually, but they don’t really talk about this stuff with an uninvolved party in the room. 

Moose’s eyes flick over to Archie, who looks uncomfortable, but like he’s trying to appear not. 

He looks back at her, and grins, but he’s still looking awkward. “Uh, yeah – I decided to skip class, and he ended up coming along for the ride.”

She nods, trying to end this moment. “Totally. So, this woman –“ she tries.

“Yeah, she was really cool? Tiny Asian lady. Maybe about 35? I can’t tell ages but I’d say around there.” Moose says to both of them, speaking quicker than usual, but no one comments on this. 

“So...what have we got?” Archie asks, sounding confused.

She sighs. “Not a whole lot, I feel like. But thanks for going there, babe. I guess you can’t just go up to people and ask them why their house was in your dream.” 

This seems to strike a chord with Archie though, and he frowns. “I don’t know if this even means anything,” he begins. “But you know, that new girl?” 

Midge feels goosebumps, and can’t tell if it’s just that she’s increasingly mentioned in connection with these creepy events. “What about her?”

He frowns more, thinking about it. “It’s probably – I don’t know, nothing. But I kind of saw her – or noticed her for the first time at lunch time – and she looked at me, and it felt like I recognised her?”

Midge immediately thinks of seeing her in the cafeteria. “I don’t know what it means – but I think I had a similar experience.”

Archie looks stunned. Moose just looks confused. 

“Which is why I was trying to befriend her today, in Bio,” she continues. “She totally blew me off for lunch though. Isn’t interested in making friends, which is weird because I swear we were getting along until –“ 

She stops, because the boys are looking curious. She didn’t mean to sound so much like it mattered, but it kind of hurt. 

“Whatever. She’s going to be difficult to learn anything from, I think,” she continues, more mercenarily than she means to sound. 

“I’m not trying to sound like –“ Archie begins. “Like, racist, but it’s a small town, and there aren’t that many new people,” he continues, and she internally breathes a sigh of relief that sentence didn’t go where she thought it might be going. 

“Do you think that the Asian lady from the house could be her mom? I know you said she was in her thirties, but she might have had kids young...” he finishes, and she’s surprised. He doesn’t generally look like the voice of reason in his group. 

“Good point, Arch,” she says to him, and he brightens a little. “I think...there’s something going on with them. I don’t know what it is, but they seem to have moved in just around when all of this weird stuff started happening.”

Moose nods. Archie looks serious. “Look, I’ve really gotta go – but I think you should keep trying with her. I have a feeling she...knows something at the very least. And who else are we going to ask?” 

“No one we don’t want thinking we’re crazy,” Moose replies gloomily. 

“Exactly,” she says, and then her phone buzzes. 

It’s a text from Tina. 

_ u still good to hang?  _

“Well, I should go too...” she says quickly. 

“You don’t wanna stay?” Moose asks, surprised.

She smiles at him, realising he probably thought that since he invited her. “I – had plans with my mom, I know it’s lame, but she worries. You know her.” 

He nods. “Oh, sure. You need a lift there?”

“No, no I’m fine,” she says quickly. 

Archie looks at her. “I’ve got my truck, I can drop you off if you want? Save Moose the trouble.” 

She shakes her head, cursing the fact these teenage boys are nice enough to offer.

“No, really. I’d like the walk,” she says quickly. 

She feels like she’s doing a lot of lying lately, about stupid things like this.  
  


***

  
Midge gets to Tina’s house at ten past four. 

She likes Tina’s house. It’s bigger than hers, and her parents are really nice. Her dad runs a local law practice, and always asks her how school is going, but in a kind way. 

Tina thinks he’s embarrassing, and she sometimes reminds her that at the very least it means he cares enough about her life, her friends, to embarrass her. 

They’re not home yet, she doesn’t think. Her mom has a homewares shop, and often works later on days like this. It’s surprisingly popular. People here love the kitsch, maybe. 

She knocks on the door, waits, and Tina opens it. 

“So, good ride?” Tina asks, flippantly, smirking. 

Midge gives her a tired look. “Really?”

“I’m enquiring, innocently, about Moose taking you home.” Tina says with a laugh, letting her in. 

“It was fine. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t in danger. He’s a really sweet boyfriend.” She says, honestly, as Tina leads her upstairs. 

“Aw, you guys are so cute.” Tina coos. “I need to find a boyfriend like that. I’m thinking of setting my sights on Reggie – at this rate, he’s going to be the last hot available footballer. I mean, before this new girl swoops in and decides she wants him. It was the same with Veronica, right, like there are limited options and she comes in the year Archie gets hot and has joined the football team? Like –“ 

Midge stems the flow of words, as she follows Tina into the bedroom. “Did you really want to date Archie, though? He’s nice, but –“

Tina makes a face. “Not really – you heard that rumour right? I was  _ at  _ the party when it – anyway, all I’m saying is it would have been nice to have the chance before some rich girl decides she can take her pick.”

Tina can be a great friend, and Midge cares a lot about her, but sometimes she talks total nonsense. It’s only because of how well Midge knows her that she can understand the underlying insecurities under her nonsensical rants.

She grins at her. “Tina, I say this with total love, but don’t go for Reggie. Sure you’d have fun, but believe me he’s not the boyfriend you’re looking for.”

Tina pouts. “But he’s so  _ hoooot _ . We’d look so good together, too,” she whines. 

Midge laughs. “You would. I don’t know, teenage boys are really fucking annoying sometimes. Especially footballers. Why do you even need a boyfriend?” 

Tina scowls at her. “That’s easy for you to say, you have one,” she lowers her voice in concern. “Was he a bit freaked out by...what happened?” 

Midge is surprised by the conversational change. “Yeah, nothing too bad...He’s just going through some of the same stuff I was on my first day back,” she says, smile fading. 

Tina looks at her with worry. “Oh no, you didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t ignore you, did I?”

Midge shakes her head. “No, no, I just didn’t want to worry you guys. It’s ok.” 

Tina takes her by the shoulders, gently. “You know you can tell me anything, right, Midge? I’m your best friend,” she says, softly.

“I know. You’re mine too,” she says, leaning closer. 

Tina leans in and kisses her. “I was so afraid when I heard about it,” she says quietly, when she pulls back. “I don’t know what I would have –“ 

Midge kisses her again, partly to make her feel better, and partly to silence the anxiety that wells up whenever anyone mentions the attack. 

She rests her head against Tina’s. “It’s ok. I didn’t die. Everything’s fine.”

Tina smiles a little more at this, and buries her face in Midge’s shoulder. Midge holds her tightly, and hopes she’s right about that. 

It’s maybe not the healthiest situation, but it works for Midge. Which is selfish, she knows, but it’s not like Tina’s not being selfish here. She’ll stop this the moment some guy asks her out, because that fits her own idea of herself better. Unlike her situation with Moose, she can’t see any future footballer boyfriend of Tina’s allowing her to still keep up this thing with her. Well, possibly Reggie but he’d almost certainly be gross about it.   
  


***

  
Sabrina breathes out a sigh of relief when she gets home, and flops down on her bed. 

It’s been a long day. If she didn’t think they’d probably be moving soon anyway, she’d feel worse about how she seemed to have a knack for making sure the most popular kids at school hated her, in case they didn’t already. 

“Knock knock,” comes a voice from the door. 

“Come in,” she says, half-heartedly. 

“Aw, hon.” Hazel says sympathetically, on seeing her. “Bad day?”

She almost laughs. “No more than the usual.” She sits up a little, and looks at Hazel properly, remembering something. 

“Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Hazel smiles. “Of course. Shoot.”

She thinks about it. “It might be nothing -”

“Here, I’m not so sure.” Hazel interjects cryptically, but nods for her to continue. 

She looks at Hazel, wondering how to put it. “I was working with this girl in Bio, and I touched her hand and I felt something, I think.”

Hazel raises an eyebrow. “Been there.”

She scowls at her, colouring slightly. “Not like that - that’s not the point! I -”

“Who wants tea? Hi Sab - what are we talking about?” Zelda comes up behind Hazel, smiling. 

Hazel puts an arm around her. “Sabrina’s just telling me how she touched a girl’s hand and she felt something today,” she informs Zelda, with a mischievous smile.

Zelda nods sagely. “Been there.”

Sabrina scowls at Hazel’s shit-eating grin. “Uuuugh, why do I bother?” she groans, even though she knows Hazel’s just teasing.

Hazel relents, smiling more apologetically. “Sorry Sab, tell me your thing, I promise not to interrupt again.”

Sabrina fixes her with a dirty look, but can’t help smiling a little. It’s hard to stay mad at Hazel, she’s a lot of fun. 

“Ok, if we’re all done  _ making jokes, _ ” she continues, milking it. “I felt something - under her skin, I think? Something that shouldn’t be there. Or maybe it should. It shocked me,” she finishes, looking for their reactions.

Both Hazel and Zelda’s expressions change. Hazel immediately looks more serious, and Zelda’s becomes very interested. 

“You think it was magic?” Hazel says seriously. “Do you think she’s a witch?”

Sabrina thinks about it for a moment. It was possible, maybe, but her senses usually knew. They could be playing up, though. “I don’t know,” she replies honestly, shrugging. “I don’t think so. I think she’s...something, though.”

Hazel seems to consider this, looking worried like something’s occurred to her, and she doesn’t like it. “There’s someone I need to talk to, then.”

Zelda jumps in, looking curious. “I’ve been reading about an attack, recently. A shooting. Teenage boy and girl. This girl wasn’t...involved, was she?”

Sabrina is surprised by this, but then Zelda’s always had a skill for intuiting things. 

“Yeah - actually that’s why I touched her, I was trying to comfort her about it…” she says tentatively.

Zelda nods, interested, and clearly thinking of something. “It’s funny that happened to you today...around lunch I got some visitors -” 

Sabrina notices Hazel tense, hold Zelda a little closer. 

Zelda shakes her head, looking at her. “No, no babe, nothing to do with her. Just two teenage boys. It was actually really sweet, they said they lived around here, and wanted to welcome us to the neighbourhood,” she says, smiling at the memory. 

Sabrina sometimes marvels that Zelda is as sweet, and optimistic about people as she is. She definitely has reason not to, and yet she’s the believer among two cynics. 

She looks at Sabrina, snapping out of it. “But when I shook the boy’s hand - he was about your age, footballer, dark haired, stocky, if you know him, I think he might have been involved too  - I think I felt the same exact thing. It kind of freaked me out for a moment, and I worry I wasn’t as nice as I could’ve been saying goodbye to them,“

Hazel and Sabrina share a smirk. This is unlikely.

“But I really had to figure out what it was..” she finishes.

Sabrina feels a tinge of excitement, somehow. She knew she hadn’t imagined it, and two instances is more than a coincidence for people like them. 

“Did you?” she asks quickly, leaning forward. 

Zelda frowns slightly. “I don’t know. We don’t know enough to narrow it down…”

Hazel still looks worried. “Could be dangerous, though. Worth knowing more about.”

”You’re friendly with the girl, right? Can you maybe buddy up to her and figure it out?” Zelda asks innocently. 

Sabrina gets a flash of Midge’s face, hurt, after she said she wasn’t looking for friends, and feels her heart sink. “Yeah, maybe.” 

“And I know who I’ve gotta talk to,” Hazel says resolutely, like she’s not looking forward to it.

There’s a knock on the door, a specifically impatient  _ rat-tat-tat  _ rap that carries easily into Sabrina’s bedroom. 

Hazel and Zelda look at each other, worried. Hazel looks at her seriously. “Would that be a friend of yours?” she asks briskly. 

Sabrina shakes her head, feeling a prickle of fear. 

“Stay back, while I get the door.” Hazel says, a steel edge to her words. It’s amazing how scary she can seem when she’s in full protector-badass mode, and how different it is to her normal goofy, snarky self. 

Zelda closes the door just enough for them to peek in the crack, and watch Hazel. She says some words under her breath, waits, and seemingly satisfied with the result, opens the door, keeping the screen door closed. 

They can’t properly see who is at the door. Sabrina’s heart thuds. 

“Oh my god, speak of the devil…” she hears Hazel say in a funny voice, part contempt, part anger, and part awe. “How long has it been?” she says, but it’s bitter, some kind of parody of what one says when they haven’t seen someone in a long time. 

“Can I come in?” a manicured, but harsh voice answers. Hazel doesn’t answer.

Nonetheless, they see her unlock the screen door, and let the woman in. 

The woman looks uncomfortable, and disdaining of her surroundings. She’s got a kind of prim look to her clothes, but it doesn’t suit the sharpness of her expression. 

“You can come out, guys,” Hazel calls. “There’s someone I think you should meet.” 

Zelda draws back from the door. She gives her a questioning look, and Zelda shrugs. They open the bedroom door together and walk out. 

The woman gives them a once-over, suspiciously, and seems to raise her eyebrows the merest amount after clocking Sabrina’s makeup and dark clothes. Sabrina decides that she doesn’t like this woman, with her disapproving expression and her neutral lipstick. She doesn’t have to read her mind to know she’s thinking something like, “ _ My  _ daughter would never  _ dream  _ of dressing like that,”

“I don’t think you’ve ever met my wife, Zelda?” Hazel says, addressing the woman. 

She shakes her head. “I think you wrote me a postcard to say,” she says stiffly. 

“This is our niece Sabrina. She’s probably the same age as your youngest, right?” Hazel continues, without more explanation. She secretly appreciates this. Hazel doesn’t make excuses for her, doesn’t apologise for her existence. 

The woman nods, curtly. Sabrina wonders why she’s even come, if she’s so uncomfortable here.

Hazel looks at them, and there’s something unexpected in her gaze. Some small, strong emotion, buried in her eyes, pushed to the back and covered by harsher ones. 

“Zel, Sabrina - this is Alice Cooper. My erstwhile little sister.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really hope you liked the reveals because it's only going on from there! real talk if i can't have madchen on witches of east end (if you haven't and you want to see her play a fun witch lady GET ON IT) i can have her witch-adjacent, right?
> 
> The songs mentioned are - The Presets, "This Boy's In Love"; and The Killers' "Spaceman" (which the chapter title is from)
> 
> thanks for sticking with this! hopefully next one sooner :))


	6. I Feel A Bad Moon On The Rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, this got away from me, I intended to have it a short chapter up earlier, but here we are :) hope you enjoy this monster chapter instead :)) edit: i posted this when i was half asleep, sorry, it should be fixed now haha

 

Sabrina feels her jaw drop in surprise. She knows that it’s rude, but she can’t help it. The mysterious little sister had been a part of various stories but if she ever asked Hazel where she was now, Hazel would be vague and change the subject quickly.

As she got older, the sister disappeared from the stories totally. She stopped asking about her. She’d almost forgotten she existed until now.

And now here she was.

The little sister had sounded fun, wild, reckless. To say the woman with the pinched expression, and the pastel-coloured sweater was the same person seemed insane.

“This is all very sweet, but I have to talk to you Hazel. Now.” Alice says curtly, looking only at Hazel.

Hazel’s mouth tightens. “You can talk to me now.”

Alice raises an eyebrow. “Ok, we’re doing this here? Fine. I want to know what the hell you’re doing back here. It’s been twenty years since you took off, and now you’re just – back?” she says, with some repressed anger. “Bringing all of _that_ back here?”

Hazel’s eyes flash, steely but unmistakably angry.

“Maybe I needed your help, Alice. You owe me, you know that,” Hazel says coolly, not breaking eye contact.

Alice’s eyes don’t lose their hawklike intensity, but she pales a little.

“And you’re here to collect, then?” Alice asks, with a sarcastic edge.

Hazel narrows her eyes, giving her sister a curious look. “Have you told them? Your girls?”

Alice reacts furiously, narrowing her eyes even further and looking like Hazel’s just called her something deeply disturbing.

“How dare you, Hazel!” she raises her voice frantically, almost shouting. She steps toward Hazel, and now Sabrina can recognise some elements of the wild girl in her. “It’s my right to decide when. And neither of them has –“ she breaks off, breathing heavily and seems to remember Sabrina and Zelda behind her sister.

“Don’t worry about us, we already know – well more than that, we’re apart of it,” Zelda pipes up, kindly as ever.

Alice’s expression goes shocked for a moment, then settles into something like interest, though filtered through evident disdain. “Yes...you are, aren’t you?”

Sabrina just fixes her with an insouciant look, and says nothing.

“Come on, I’ll make some tea. We have to talk.” Hazel says, matter-of-factly, and walks toward the kitchen. Alice sets her lips in a thin line, but with a last glance back at Zelda and Sabrina, follows her down the hallway.

Zelda looks at her. “Wow. I knew she existed, somewhere, but I didn’t expect her to be so...” she trails off, apparently at a loss for words.

“Pleasant and cheery?” Sabrina finishes darkly. Zelda grins.

 

***

 

“So I – technically have cousins here, sort of?” Sabrina asks Hazel, later after Alice has left. Zelda is washing dishes in the kitchen, having shrugged off their offers to help politely.

Alice left less angry, but there was a look of something difficult shared between her and her sister, a solemn, begrudging complicity that worried her. Hazel wouldn’t tell her what they had really talked about, and she had felt bad for prying.

“Something like that,” Hazel says, smiling over her mug of tea. “I’ve never met them, but they looked like nice kids...then again the most recent photo I have of them is when they were about four and six, so...” she says contemplatively, watching the steam rise from the mug.

Sabrina watches her. ”You can tell me that you don’t want to talk about it, and I’ll shut up but,” Hazel looks up curiously. She considers her words. “What...happened there? When did you stop talking?”

Hazel sighs, and looks into her tea. Sabrina doesn’t know if this means to drop it, or that she’s going to answer.

She looks up, with a kind of weary smile. “Sometimes I envied only children like you, Sab. There might be things you miss out on, but you have –“ she breaks off, like she’s looking for words. “Having a sister is hard. We never communicated particularly well in the first place, and she’s just – there’s a lot of childhood stuff, decades of complicated dynamics between us. It doesn’t go away.”

Sabrina nods, taking a sip from her own mug. “If you don’t want to talk about it – “

Hazel shakes her head. “No, I don’t mind. Zelda knows a lot of it, anyway.”

Sabrina smiles sympathetically. “I guess it’s gotta be kind of intense. I don’t know if anyone’s known me my whole life, except you guys. And –“ she breaks off, looking into her tea.

“Yeah, and we were already adults probably from the earliest you can remember.” Hazel muses, reaching out a hand lightly. Sabrina appreciates it.

Hazel shakes her head. “I wasn’t the best big sister. I was selfish. Well, we both were. Had to be, no one else was gonna give a shit about us.” She sometimes talks about her childhood like this, but not often. Sabrina can understand why - it seemed pretty bleak, father in and out of their lives, mother unable or unwilling to actually look after her children, flighty and unstable.

“I’m sorry,” Sabrina says quietly, hating that she doesn’t know what else to say.

Hazel smiles at her, still misty-eyed. “Why are you apologising? It’s not your fault.”

“So you just...stopped talking?” Sabrina asks, in spite of herself.

Hazel makes a so-so hand motion, screwing up her nose. “Sort of. I left the family first – she wasn’t happy about it...when we were little, we used to say we’d go away and have our own coven when we were older. Away from our mom...” Hazel’s mouth twists into a sour line at this, for a moment. “She might have been a crazy, alcoholic cow with no clue how to be a parent,” Hazel says, with an ironic, bitter smile. “But she was lucid enough to teach us what we had to know. Well, her and Aunt Lucy. Did that for us at least.”

This, Sabrina knows. Hazel obviously never had a good relationship with her mother, as a mother, but she seems to respect her teachings as a witch, and her aunt’s in the way that they made her who she is. She can’t say that she feels the same.

“But what it really was – after our Aunt Lucy died, it was like the only adult that cared about us was gone, and we both took it hard. I got out, found more people like us. Like me. She stayed here, traded in her rage against the system to become a part of it. I guess I never realised she wanted that kind of normality – picket fence, husband, suburbs, kids.” Hazel finishes, looking down at her now-nearly empty mug sadly. “I never thought I’d be back.”

“Maybe she needed the security of it. You know, to feel moored somewhere.” Sabrina says, hoping she doesn’t sound bitter. She can’t even imagine it, living somewhere like this long enough to hate it. Then again, she’s never been as at home in the small towns. She likes the cities, you can get lost there, there’s more privacy somehow when there’s so many people.

She looks at Hazel, seriously. “Why did you come back? You never said you grew up here.”

Hazel looks at her, failing to totally hide the worry in her eyes. “It’s ok. I just – might need my sister’s help with something.”

Sabrina feels a spike of fear up her spine.

“You promised you’d always be honest with me, Haze – are we in danger? Like, has it gotten worse?” she asks anxiously.

Hazel reaches over and grabs her hand, looking at her seriously. “I promise you, I will tell you. We’re not in the business of keeping things from you. But for now, don’t worry about it. And remember, she won’t get you. Not while I’m around,” she says fiercely.

Sabrina meets her eyes and nods, willing her heartbeat to stop racing.

 

***

 

Midge sneaks into her bedroom window, closes it as quietly as possible and drops onto her bed. It’s later than she planned to be home, but with any luck her mom is still driving home from work. She texted to make sure, but didn’t get a reply. Hopefully, she’s not sitting downstairs waiting for her to explain.

Right on cue, she hears their old car roll into the driveway, and breathes a sigh of relief.

She turns on her bedside lamp so she’s not just sitting around in the dark, but thoughts of everything continue to race around her mind.

It’s not like it wasn’t complicated before. Not bad, necessarily, but not exactly simple. This sort of dance she was doing to balance the whims of being popular, which mean people looked at you more but also cared about your business more, with whatever she and Moose were trying to do.

She sighs, thinking about him. Sometimes she can’t believe that she’s so lucky to have met him because thinking about it, despite what Tina thinks, she wouldn’t want to date any of his other teammates. Even the nicer ones.

She wasn’t used to being a popular child – it was basically that she was new and relatively cute and well-dressed, upon moving here at twelve, that allowed her entry to the popular circle. A year or so after that, boys were starting to get interested in girls, and asking them out. She was friendly with Moose, but he took so long working up to asking her out that by the time they actually started going out they were both fourteen. No other boy had ever shown her much attention, and he was the kindest boy she’d ever met, the best kind of first-love experience. And then things got complicated.

There’s so much work to put into being popular, especially somewhere as insular and boring as a small town. They fit quite comfortably into the scene, especially when they joined the requisite teams they needed to, and they looked good. Moose and Midge, jock and cheerleader, very sweet. They started sleeping together, they enjoyed it. It worked for a while, until suddenly they were missing each other’s calls, having stupid fights about nothing.

 It wasn’t until one night they were alone at hers, drinking some liquor she’d swiped from the private collection her mom didn’t hide nearly well enough, that they got talking. She can’t even remember how it started - maybe because of a movie they were watching - but she remembers how scared he was, and how it was dark in the living room and they were lying on the carpet and he wouldn’t look at her. And how he told her something he’d never told anyone, and expected her to hate him, and she cried but had to explain it was because she was happy – somehow, against all the odds, she’d found the one person she knew now could understand exactly what she was going through.

It wasn’t really till this year that they’d worked out this arrangement, and as much as she isn’t _jealous_ , in a hateful way, and as much as she doesn’t feel guilty – she does, sometimes. Sometimes, it’s for not wanting to just be with him, sometimes it’s for not wanting to let him go.

And then there’s Tina. It was probably a selfish idea to get involved with such a close friend, when it’s unlikely to end well. But – it’s not like there’s a large selection of queer girls in this town – at least ones who are out, or that she knows of – she just took the opportunity that was presented to her by a sleepover and half a bottle of wine.  

Tina knows a little about their deal, enough to know it’s not cheating, but Midge can tell she doesn’t love it. But she also doesn’t want to date her, especially not publically, so. She can’t tell who’s using who.

She shakes her head, hearing a knock on the door.

“Come in,” she says, picking up her phone to look like she’s been doing something other than just thinking too much.

Her mom enters. “Hey, hon. Just wondering if you’re ok if we order in tonight? I’m exhausted. Lots of people coming for check-ups and not having the cards they need, and some of them need to take that out on me,” she says, with a tired smile.

She frowns sympathetically. “That sucks, Mom. Yeah, that’s fine. Chinese?”

Her mom smiles. “Sounds good. You look a bit tired yourself. Are you getting enough sleep?”

She flashes on the dream for a moment. “Yeah,” she lies. “Just getting back into it.”

Her mom looks at her for a moment, then seems to accept it. “Ok. Well come down soon, and we can pick from one of the menus,” she says, smiling, and closes the door.

She lies back, feeling her smile fade. Not to mention, all of the weird and horrifying shit that’s been happening very recently in her life. Can’t forget about that, exactly. Her thoughts turn again to the new girl. Sabrina.

Somehow, she’s important. But that’s just a gut feeling – she’s rude, and obviously doesn’t want to be friends, and that she knows.

Midge gets up, shaking her head, and goes to order some egg rolls.

 

***

 

Sabrina puts her makeup on in the mirror, methodically, as she does every morning. It’s her own personal ritual.     She feels like it gives her strength, out there in the world.

There’s a power in rituals, as she was taught from as long as she can remember. Black lipstick and a choker is one way to create walls. Everyone has their security blankets, even if they won’t always admit it.

 

***

 

She enters the main hallway of the high school, frowning. She hadn’t been able to think of a good way to explain her brushing-off to Midge yesterday on the way here, and seeing the crush of students clustered around lockers and chatting loudly to each other is making her more anxious about it.

She sees Midge at her locker, and sighs. _You could just try not being an asshole, for once, and maybe you wouldn’t get into situations like this_ , she thinks and then shakes her head irritably. She walks up to Midge, hoping the right words will present themselves in time.

Midge notices her, looking momentarily surprised, before her expression becomes more casually disinterested.

“Oh, it’s you. Do you need...Bio notes, or something?” she asks, not pausing from getting books out of her locker.

She tries to say something, but is stopped by the appearance of some friend of Midge’s appearing almost out of nowhere, at her shoulder. “Can we help you, Beetlejuice?” she says, smirking snottily.

“Yeah, actually – I was trying to talk to Midge here for a second. In private. Is that ok, or do you have to check with the hive mind?” she retorts, and regretting snapping so quick for the second time this week. But these smug teenagers make her want to fill their lockers with tarantulas, just as they’re getting a book out.

The snotty girl rears back at the insult, looking at Midge like a tattle-tale child. Midge narrows her eyes at her, actually stopping what she’s doing. “Hey, you can’t talk to my friends like that!”

She nods quickly. “I know, that came out badly, I’m sorry,” she says, and looks at the snotty girl, mentally summoning any remaining chill to apologise to a girl who now looks unbearably smug since she’s gotten Midge to stick up for her. “Sorry, Midge’s friend.”

“Tina.” Midge adds, looking slightly mollified by the apology.

She looks at Tina. She’s seen a lot of cheerleaders in the last few years, and she’s begun to recognise the type – this girl isn’t the top of the food chain, just a worker bee; mean but not quick enough on the uptake, pretty enough but insecure enough to take it out on anyone lower than her.

Summoning the remains of her chill, she says, more politely, “I just have to talk to your friend for like, a minute, then she’s all yours. All good?”

Tina narrows her eyes, still smirking. “No I don’t think it is. Why do you need to be here? She might be too nice to say it to your face, but I’m not – she doesn’t want to talk to you, ok? You’re weird.”

“Tina, come on-“ Midge protests half-heartedly, but her nightmare of a friend cuts her off.

Sabrina was never great at keeping her temper in check. “Oh, I’m weird? You’re co-dependent enough to freak out that strangers want to talk to your friend, _and_ you wanna talk for her!”

Tina smirks victoriously. “Oh yeah? She’s the one that told me this yesterday after Bio, didn’t you Midge?” 

Sabrina’s eyes inadvertently flick towards Midge, who looks uncomfortable, and she knows it’s true. Not that it’s a surprise – she’s accepted that’s she’s strange and her life is, And she did dismiss Midge pretty coldly – but it sucks to hear it nonetheless.

Tina continues, pressing her victory. “So, I’m sorry you’ve got some kind of crush on her,  but I think it’s better you don’t talk to her outside of class -”

Midge’s face clouds while she’s saying this, and she suddenly slams her locker shut and storms off. Tina looks shocked, then takes a second to glare at her, before running after her.

Sabrina just stands there for a moment, frustrated, before noticing that the obnoxious jock from yesterday is leaning against the lockers opposite, smirking, and she briefly wonders whether it would be worth it to curse him just for that. On catching her eye, he claps, and says loudly, “Nice work, new girl! Making friends already!”

She glares at him, and storms off before she loses control and he ends up with burned-off eyebrows.

 

*

 

Midge can’t fully focus during Vixens practice, even though physically she’s feeling strong. Stronger than ever, to be honest.

Tina keeps bugging her to tell her what’s wrong, and no matter how many times she says it’s fine, and that she isn’t mad, Tina won’t drop it.

“Good form, Klump! Did the hospital _actually_ make you better?” Cheryl calls, watching their moves. A compliment from her is a rare enough instance that she doesn’t even mind the embedded insult.

She feels amazing, actually, getting back into the exercise. And it feels nice to be around the other girls, it feels _normal_ for the first time in forever.

She finds herself walking next to Veronica towards the changing rooms, avoiding Tina’s insistent eyes. “You were on fire today, Midge!” she says jovially. “Where did all that energy come from?”

Midge smiles and shrugs. “I have no idea, but I feel _so_ great. And like, stronger, if that makes sense?”

Veronica nods empathetically. “You went through something awful, but I’ve read articles about how surviving something like that can actually, psychically fortify you.”

She laughs a little. “Yeah I guess – but I mean like, I used to struggle with holding people up, but I like, barely strained myself today?”

Veronica raises an eyebrow, then smiles. “Well, then let me know when you decide to be Wonder Woman, I’m totally in. I’ll be your offsider.”

Midge laughs with Veronica.

“Where’s your other half?” she asks, the thought having just occurred to her.

“Oh, Betty had to run off. Someone she had to talk to before lunch ends, I think?.” Veronica says casually, without hesitation.

 

*

 

Sabrina stares out at the oval as she picks at her lunch, still fuming.

Out of all the crappy places she’d passed through, this one had gotten terrible in record time.

Although, she thinks with irritation, that was partly her fault.

But what’s the point of trying to make friends? She can’t tell them about her life, and she’s never in town long enough for it to matter.

She notices a blonde girl in a baseball ringer shirt and shorts making a beeline for her, and wonders why it looks familiar. Then she remembers that Midge had the same outfit on yesterday, and that this girl must also be a cheerleader, and groans to herself. Now they’re seeking her out? Brilliant.

She gets up to leave as the girl reaches her. “Are the bleachers cheerleader territory, ponytail? Don’t worry I’m leaving, anyway.”

Ponytail looks momentarily confused, then shakes her head. “No, don’t –“ she says urgently.

The girl, she notices looks determined. Sabrina wonders if this is some kind of strange prank, but doesn’t move to leave, curious.

“I’m Betty,” she explains, and then to Sabrina’s blank look she continues. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

She feels even more taken aback by this, although there’s something familiar about her. Now that she’s thinking about it, she can feel it on the back of her neck, and her arms, and pinpointing her scalp. Something she can’t quite place yet.

“Why?” she asks shortly. “Have we met?”

The girl – Betty – looks slightly awkward at this, like she’s just now realising how odd it sounds.

“No – but you’re Sabrina, right? Your aunt is Hazel Sullivan?” she asks, persistently.

Now she really is confused, because who in this town knows her aunts? Then, looking at the shape of Betty’s face, the penny drops.

“Oh, you’re _her_ daughter! I gotta say, I was pretty spot on with my mental picture of the kind of daughter she’d have.”

Betty frowns slightly at this, and somehow Sabrina feels a pang of guilt about it. She of all people knows what it’s like to want to distance yourself from a parent.

“So, you’ve met my mom, then?” Betty says, in an almost apologetic way that makes Sabrina almost smile, stopping it at a quirk of one side of her mouth.

“Briefly. I don’t think she liked me,” Sabrina says casually.

“Yeah, that sounds like her.” Betty replies, with the air of someone who isn’t even attempting to disagree anymore.

“So she...told you?” Sabrina ventures curiously, after a moment.

“She got home last night and she looked shaken –“ Betty begins, then looks at her quizzically. “Wait, told me what?”

 _Shit_ , Sabrina thinks. “Nothing,” she tries, but Betty looks unimpressed.

“What is it?” she insists.

“Nothing –“ she tries again, unsuccessfully. “I have to go –“

“Please tell me,” Betty says doggedly, moving to block her. She looks determined, but also worried  and for the second time in the last few minutes Sabrina feels guilty, which annoys her. It’s the eyes, they’re unfairly big. Betty looks at her beseechingly. “I need to know if my mom’s in trouble.”

She sighs, scrunching her eyes up. “Damnit.”

Opening her eyes, she asks, “What did she tell you last night – it had to be about Hazel, right?”

Betty nods quickly. “She didn’t say anything when she came home, but there was this look in her eyes...” she trails off, and shakes herself. “My mom isn’t scared of much. She never talks much about her childhood, but I don’t think it was good. I’ve never seen her look like that – she didn’t even see me see her come in. She was shaken by something.”

Sabrina nods, wondering how she can pretend to not know what it most likely was.

“But I got out of bed to get a glass of water, and she was downstairs, in the kitchen alone, drinking a bottle of wine.” Sabrina resists the urge to smirk at this, given the dismissive vibe she and Zelda had gotten from the woman who looked like a picture of middle-class white suburbia.

Betty looks hesitant, like she’s wondering whether to reveal more. “She was crying. You don’t know how weird that is – I can only remember one or two times I’ve seen her cry. I asked her what was wrong, and she broke down and told me.”

Sabrina braces for the whole truth. But somehow, she doesn’t think it’s _that_. She’d have that look in her eyes.

“She said her sister had moved back here, and they hadn’t spoken in years, which is definitely true because I had _no idea_ I even had an aunt on her side, but lying about family issues is kind of my parents favourite thing, so-“ Betty says rapidly, with hint of bitterness, and stops herself.

“I feel that,” Sabrina replies darkly, before she can stop herself. “So she told you that her niece just started at your school, right? That’s why you’re here?” she says matter-of-factly, uncomfortably aware that Betty wants to know more than she wants to get involved with. She does seem nice – and her life is probably so normal it’s boring, but small town school dances and crushes on boys and cheerleading are much easier and nicer than what Sabrina has to deal with.

Betty pauses, looking at her curiously. “Well I want to know if there’s a reason my mom is scared of your aunt – or something else she’s brought up,” she pauses, and smiles a little, earnestly. “Also, we’re – family, sort of, by marriage I guess?...and you’re new. I thought you might want a friend.”

Sabrina sighs. She half-wants to use her standard response to that, in the same way she brushed off Midge, but she’s more moved by the speech than she’d like to admit. And besides, if Betty does end up getting pulled into this mess by her mother, it might be good to have her on side.

She nods. “I’d – I’d like that.” She looks away and back. “I don’t know much about Hazel and your mom, just stories from when they were kids,” she says honestly, preparing to lie to her newest and only friend. “I don’t know what could’ve scared her, maybe it was something they talked about. Hazel wouldn’t let me into the kitchen.” That part was true, which didn’t bode well. Hazel didn’t shield her from much information.

Betty takes this in, and Sabrina can’t tell if she believes her. “Ok. Do you think you can ask your other aunt about it?”

“Uh, maybe? I’ll see what I can do.” Sabrina replies, as non-committally as possible.

Betty smiles, satisfied, and Sabrina internally breathes a sigh of relief. Then something occurs to her.

“Hey, you’re on the cheer squad right?” she asks, and Betty seemingly auto-corrects her with, “River Vixens.”

“Whatever,” she replies and regrets how it comes out. “Do you know a girl with short dark hair on the team? Midge? Have you sensed anything – off, or just like, out of the ordinary with her? Especially today?”

Betty gives her another quizzical look. It’s slightly suspicious, but she answers normally. “Midge? Only that I was surprised that she got out of hospital so fast, I thought for certain she’d been injured in that attack...” something seems to occur to her. “Actually, I don’t know if this is weird or whatever, but she seemed really energised in practice before. She barely broke a sweat doing lifts, and usually we struggle a bit more with them. I don’t know, that probably means nothing –“ she breaks off, and Sabrina can tell it’s because she can’t hide how interested she is in this, and how she can’t help feeling a shiver of fear about it.

She looks at Betty, seriously. “So this psycho tried to shoot her and her boyfriend? Isn’t it possible  they dodged the bullets?”

Betty looks worried again. “That’s the weird thing – they were in his car, so they should have at least been hit... Maybe he was further away, bad aim, but Midge saw the colour of his eyes through his hood, so he must have been pretty close. My friend told me that, at least. He asked her because he had a run in with this guy, and the guy actually shot his dad,” she shakes her head. “I don’t know why I’m saying all this, but please just – be careful who you tell.”

“Right, of course,” Sabrina says, feeling her sense of both dread and curiosity growing. “This friend of yours, he’s not the red-headed one I saw you sitting with yesterday, is he?” she asks, having just at that moment placed her as the pony-tailed girl sitting opposite the boy who had been staring at her.

Betty looks taken aback.

 

***

 

Sabrina walks into Bio somewhat anxiously. Her lab partner is probably still annoyed with her, and she really needs her to not be right now, if she’s going to figure anything out.

Midge’s bitchy friend from earlier is in their class, and death-stares her as she surveys the classroom. She ignores this, sucks up her courage and walks down to their table.

Midge is already there, and she looks somehow different, even from this morning. Sabrina’s never been great at aura-reading, no matter how much Zelda tries to teach her, but she’s picking something up. Even if she can’t understand it – Midge looks good, better than that, almost radiant – and yet, something is making the hairs on the back of Sabrina’s neck stand up.

Midge doesn’t acknowledge her as she puts her bag down. Undeterred, she looks at her and says in a lowered voice, “Look, I’m sorry about what I said yesterday. I was kind of an asshole, I know. That’s all I wanted to say this morning.”

Midge looks up, already less cold. “That’s alright. I’m sorry if I...made you uncomfortable, or something. I wasn’t trying to.”

Sabrina shakes her head, and stray black strands from her updo fall across her face. She pushes them back behind her ears, feeling uncomfortably self-conscious already. “You didn’t...I’m – not great, socially, probably because I move around a lot, so it’s not usually worth making any close friends – and what I’m trying to say is I would like to be your friend. If you still want, now you know how cool I am,” she finishes self-deprecatingly, and Midge laughs, but not unkindly. She has a really nice laugh, actually. It lights up her whole face. Which is already pretty, but is really something else today.

She’s so busy thinking about this that she almost misses what Midge is saying.

“...really like that, actually. It was a while ago, but I was new here once. Small towns are very insular, sometimes you don’t want to talk to anyone,” she says kindly.

Sabrina nods, feeling herself smiling and not even being to stop it. “Yeah, I think – I’m not great with large groups, especially of popular kids. Sorry, I know they’re your friends, but you saw me this morning, it’s not a good idea,” she thinks about this. “I am sorry about your friend. That was rude.”

Midge grins and drops her voice conspiratorally. “Ok, if you repeat this I’ll deny it, but honestly I shouldn’t have let Tina get that first shot in, so she probably had that coming. For a while.”

She nods and smiles, trying not to look too smug. _Suck it, bitchy friend._

“You looked pretty upset when you ran off before though. Was that me?” she asks tentatively.

Midge looks caught off-guard, and then shakes her head. “No that was, nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Sabrina doesn’t press the issue.

Midge smiles, a little too brightly. “Well, what are doing today? Let’s get started.”

She smiles, trying to ignore the prickling at the back of her neck as she opens her book.

 

*

 

Finding a way to ask anything she meant to before the lesson is difficult, and by halfway through the lesson she’s almost forgotten that she needs to.

It’s been so long since she’s had a friend, especially one who’s a girl and her age, it’s fun just working out their project and making dumb jokes as they do it. It happens as she brushes Midge’s arm, accidentally - and shouldn’t be shocked by the sense she gets, second time, but she is. And as she’s dealing with the realisation that she didn’t imagine it the first time, she looks up at Midge.

“Midge,” she whispers, trying not to alert everyone around. “Your nose is bleeding,”

Midge’s hand flies to her nose, looking embarrassed. Sabrina roots around in her bag hurriedly, hoping she ended up bringing that pack of tissues Zelda was insisting she bring on her first day. She locates them, finally, and silently thanks Zelda for obsessing about things she doesn’t see the need for.

But she can’t help letting out a quiet gasp, straightening up to hand over the tissues. Midge’s eyes go wide. A thin track of blood is now making its way down from each of them.

She seems to realise with a look of dawning horror, and grabs a tissue, wiping vigorously. She looks at Sabrina queasily, grabs the packet of tissues, and runs out of the class, ignoring the protests of Mr Bhatra.

Without thinking too much, Sabrina races after her, heart hammering. She shouldn’t have ignored her senses, that’s what they’re for, as Hazel would say. She would not be happy if she knew this.

She finds Midge outside, vomiting into a hallway bin. She looks pale, far removed from earlier, when she straightens up. The flecks of bile around her mouth don’t look healthy either.

“What are you doing here?” she says, wiping her mouth with a tissue. She suddenly cringes, looking humiliated. “God, I can’t believe you had to see that. What the _fuck_.”

Sabrina shakes her head. “Trust me, I’ve seen worse. I do think you should go home though.” She says carefully, and decides to test a theory. “Is it a medical condition? Did you have surgery when you were in the hospital?”

“No, I didn’t need it – I wasn’t shot. The doctors said it was some kind of miracle. I’m not sure..” Midge says, sagging against the wall.

Sabrina isn’t so sure miracle’s the word either.

Midge’s face suddenly crumples. “What if it is a medical thing? My grandma had an aneurysm, when I was twelve, and it came out of nowhere..”

Sabrina wants badly to say the right comforting thing, but before she can even try to think of it, she hears their voices called.

Mr Bhatia is walking up to them, looking concerned. “What’s happening here? Is Midge ill?”

Sabrina turns to him, perhaps to divert attention from Midge momentarily. “She is, Mr Bhatra. I think she might have picked up a stomach bug being back at school, after the strict cleanliness of the hospital,” she lies smoothly, playing up the concerned friend. She doesn’t have to try too hard though. “But her mom is currently uncontactable, so I think I should drive her home just to make sure she’s ok.”

He nods anxiously. “She doesn’t look well. Ok, Sabrina, collect your things. I’ll inform admin of what’s happened.” He looks at Midge, who is marginally less miserable looking. “Feel better, Midge.”

She nods, smiling gratefully.

She feels Tina the cheerleader’s eyes on her, boring holes in her back, but she deliberately ignores her and everyone and quickly packs up and leaves.

Midge is waiting for her, looking small and cold. Sabrina hands her the jacket she had left. Midge takes it with a shaky, grateful smile.

 “Hey, if you want to get picked up by your mom, that’s fine, I just thought you’d want to get home soon,” she says as they walk towards the exit.

“No, no I do.” Midge looks at her, embarrassed. “Sorry if this is weird –“ she starts, and looks down, looking cold and fragile. “Could you maybe stay with me until my Mom can get back from work? I just – really don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Sure, I mean, of course,” she replies awkwardly, and cringes inwardly. Nonetheless Midge’s expression lightens considerably.

“Thank you, really! That means a lot.” Midge smiles at her. “You know, you’re better at this friend thing than you think.”

Sabrina can’t help smiling, feeling a flare of warmth fight the knot of anxiety in her stomach

 

***

 

Sabrina watches the kettle, waiting for it to boil, and wonders what she’s going to do.

She needs to be able to do some tests, very quickly, but somehow without alerting Midge. Which is impossible.

But it’s not like she can be like, “Let me just do some quick spells, but don’t freak out, there just might be something very wrong with you. Oh yeah, did I not tell you I was a witch?”

She’s convinced of it now – that or Midge somehow has late stage radiation poisoning, but that seems _unlikely_ – that she didn’t imagine it, there is something weird. And she has a horrible feeling it’s linked to the mysterious attack on her life, and maybe even the person that did it.

“Finding everything ok?” Midge calls from the living room. Sabrina had left her with a blanket on the couch, watching Netflix, and had promised to make tea.

She jumps, and the kettle boils far too early. She scolds herself, Hazel would say she needed better control. “Yeah, totally! Sugar and teabags are in those ceramic containers?”

“Yeah, that’s it – what the –“ Midge calls, trailing off. Sabrina’s senses prickle instantly, and she turns to go back to the living room.

Not a second later, she hears Midge shriek, and runs into the room with her heart racing. What she sees doesn’t slow it any.

A tall figure in black is menacing Midge, who is backed up against the wall, looking petrified. The figure is insubstantial and yet very much in the shape of something vaguely human, like an oil slick made corporeal. She can’t even tell if the ragged black material hanging off it is part of it. She can’t properly make out what it looks like under it.

It hasn’t made its move on Midge yet, so she yells at it, “Hey, No-face! Get the fuck away from her!”

It turns away from Midge, and her heart beats even faster, shit-scared as she feels the hairs on the back of her neck raise all at once, sending a shiver down her arms and spine.

It has large, unnaturally dark eyes, and the unexpected whites of them stand out under the shadow of its dark hair, or what could be a heavy veil (had that veil been shipwrecked for fifty years), amongst its completely shadowed, featureless of void of a face.

“ _Wrrooonnng_ ” It wheezes at her, and the sound feels like the feeling of dragging your own nails down a chalkboard. _“Deeeserve. Heeerr. Wrrrooonnggg.”_

“Did she send you?” she shouts at it.

The creature makes no response. “ _Mmmiiiinnnne.”_ It turns back to Midge, who screeches as it attempts to make its move on her.

“The HELL SHE IS!” Sabrina yells at the same time, and moves instinctively. She feels the power push through from her core and down her arms, and she directs all of her anger of the past few lights out through her fingertips at the creature. It’s pushed back as if on a wire, and its screech is high and inhuman. It turns its dark eyes on her, and flies toward her, enraged. Feeling like her heart is going to beat out of her chest, she shouts some words and throws the curse at it. The creature explodes less than a foot from her, leaving a circle of debris in the formerly relatively clean room.

Midge makes a gasp from the wall, that borders on a hysterical sob. Sabrina runs to her.

“You alright?” she asks the pale and trembling Midge.

Midge nods, then shakes her head.

“You saved my life,” she squeaks, eyes brimming. “What – who _are_ you?”

Even buoyed by her grateful, not disgusted tone, Sabrina has no idea how to answer.

“What the hell was that?” comes a voice from the doorway.

Sabrina and Midge’s heads whip around, to see Betty Cooper holding a piece of paper, and wearing a mixture of shock, fear and intrigue on her face.

“I came to bring your Bio homework. Door was unlocked...Sorry to....interrupt...” she says faintly.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit's really starting to hit the fan, but at least half the characters involved are in on Sabrina's secret! Will try and work on new chapter during the week, but next week is my Christmas-Birthday corridor, so we'll see how much I get done :)) happy holidays all, and thanks as always, for reading.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it's been nearly a month, but it got away from me over the holidays, and also for a variety of reasons this took ages to put together, especially because it got unexpectedly long. Hope you enjoy this super sized update, i appreciate everyone here whose stuck with this weird, niche fic that i love :))

 

 

No one says anything. Betty breathes out, staring at the two girls in front of her, and the slightly-smoking ring on the carpet behind them.

Midge looks terrified, and utterly out of her depth. Sabrina looks almost guilty.

She can’t even process what just happened. It was like something out of _Lord Of The Rings._

“So...again...what the hell was that then?” she manages to say, willing her voice to stop shaking.

Sabrina looks at her, almost confused.

“That? oh - uh…” she says distantly, not breaking eye contact.

“Yeah, that big damn _Harry Potter_ creature that I just saw try to attack Midge,” she says, getting irritable for reasons she doesn’t totally understand.. “What was it? Why was it here, in Midge’s living room? Don’t lie to me, I know you know something!”

Midge looks at Sabrina, more sympathetically than Betty had. “Please, I - really have to know, Sabrina - what the _fuck_ was that thing?”

Sabrina sighs and puts her hands over her face, then removes them. “Ok, I guess there’s no way out of this,” she says, in voice tinged with panic.

Then Sabrina looks at her seriously. “But right now, I think Midge, and you especially should know. My aunts will kill me if they find out I told you. Or really, _when._ ”

Betty feels another chill. She recognises it as the kind you feel just before the last vestiges of the comfortable, easy life you thought you had are ripped away and everything changes. She’d felt it twice, specifically - once, when she came home from riding bikes with her best friend to find her sister mysteriously packed off to some group home, and then, a few weeks later when she’d heard that the town’s foremost golden boy was missing, maybe even dead.

“I want to hear it. But I think I also need tea before?” She says suddenly, feeling like she’s going to need something warm to hold on to. “Anyone want one?”  
  


***

While she waits for the kettle, she hears Midge say in a more high-pitched voice than usual, “Oh my god, look at this place, what am I going to - Mom gets home in a few hours and I do not have the skills to clean -”

“Don’t freak out, I’ll fix it. Trust me, ok?” Sabrina cuts her off, gently.

But how? Betty thinks it probably has something to do with how she disposed of the - whatever it was, the _thing_ \- but she can’t think about it too much in this moment or she’s going to start freaking out. She pours the boiling water into the cups, and strangely, feels better as she focuses on the process of making the tea.

She brings them out to see Sabrina and Midge seated at the dining, and puts one in front of Midge.

“Thanks, Betty,” Midge says gratefully, staring into her mug, still looking shaken.

She sits down in front of her own mug, and looks at Sabrina somewhat apprehensively.

“Ok. I’m ready.”

Sabrina raises a sceptical eyebrow, momentarily. It seems to say, _oh buddy, you’re so not_.

She looks at them seriously, and the effect is heightened by her dark makeup, making her eyes look more narrowed at them than they really are. “You absolutely _cannot_ tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. For your own good, and theirs. I need you to swear. It’s important.”

Betty looks over her mug at Midge, who looks pale, but determined. Hearing this has only made Betty more morbidly curious.

“I swear I won’t tell anyone,” she says quickly, but she means it. This time she’s sure she doesn’t want to share the big scoop with anyone else.

“I swear too.” Midge repeats.

Sabrina looks at them and sighs again. “Here we go then...what you saw - that was - I’m a witch. Only I’m not supposed to do magic like that, and certainly not in front of anyone who isn’t my aunts.”

Betty hears someone gasp oddly, and looks at Midge, before realising it came from her.

Sabrina looks at her solemnly, like she’s waiting for her to react more.

Her usually logical brain tries to order the facts. She would logically think that this statement couldn’t be true and therefore, Sabrina must be lying or mentally ill. While she couldn’t be 100% certain of either option, they didn’t seem right. And then there was the _thing_ she’d seen – and unless she herself was insane – something she couldn’t be totally sure of, she thought queasily – that was a big piece of evidence in Sabrina’s favour. She’d seen it with her own eyes, and they hadn’t been playing tricks because it had tried to attack Midge. Midge had seen it too.

She finds herself unsticking her throat. “I _really_ want to see how this is some kind of horrible prank...but I can’t,” she takes a breath. “So, I’m saying I believe you so far.” She says this like she’s just investigating a lead, and not feeling very shaken by the potential upending of everything she knew.

“Thank you, I guess,” Sabrina says dryly. “If I was going to lie to you though, don’t you think it would be a better one than this?”

Betty has to concede that point, privately.

Midge speaks up from her seat at the dining table, where she’s been quietly drinking her tea, gripping the mug like a security blanket. “Well, I don’t think you’re lying,” she says in a small, shaky voice that strengthens as she goes on. “I don’t care how fucking crazy this sounds. You saved my life. Because of whatever it is you are. So I’m with you on this.”

Sabrina smiles at her, small but genuine. “I’m really sorry you both have been dragged into this. I’m going to figure out what’s going on here, I promise.”

Something is niggling at Betty, her investigative instinct dying to ask more questions. Then again, if there’s any time to ask them, it’s now.

“So...will that thing come back?” she asks abruptly, and Midge nods her agreement rapidly.

Sabrina shakes her head, pursing her dark lips before she speaks. “No, that one’s dead. Don’t freak out yet, because it might not even happen, but I should put some protections on this house to make sure you’re not attracting any more like it.”

Midge squeaks into her tea, but nods. Betty shudders to think of meeting more of them.

Something is still nagging, the kind of feeling like when she’s sure she’s got all her assignments done, but feels like she’s missed one and won’t realise it till the night before.

She sips her tea anxiously, and a thought makes its way uneasily to the front of her mind.

“So, this...witch thing. I’m guessing your aunts know?” she asks, matter-of-factly.

Sabrina snorts. “Sorry. Yeah, they do. Be pretty hard to hide it from them.”

“So at least one of them is like you, then?” Betty continues.

“Yeah, they both are –“ Sabrina starts and trails off.

The anxious, gnawing feeling in her stomach grows exponentially. The horrible thought at the back of her mind finally occurs to her properly.

She looks at Sabrina, who looks uncomfortable. “So if both of them are – that means Hazel –“ she takes a steadying breath. “That would mean – is my mom like you then? Is my mom a witch?”

She waits for Sabrina’s response with rising goosebumps.

“I – I can’t say for sure. It doesn’t always happen to every member –“ Sabrina attempts to explain awkwardly.

“But if you had to say – you’ve met her – would you say –“ Betty cuts in, frustratedly.

Sabrina looks vaguely annoyed back. “Fine, I think so. I’m sorry you had to find out like this, but –“ Her expression softens. “It’s probably important that you know.”

Betty gasps, realising quickly what she’s implying. “Oh my god,” she says faintly.

She takes a sip of her own tea, trying again to marshall her thoughts into logical order.

“Betty?” Sabrina asks tentatively, “Are you ok?”

She hears this and thinks she should probably reply soon.

She finally manages to form a coherent thought, and says in a fairly calm voice, “Well this explains some things at least. Mom insists on sageing the house sometimes to deter “bad energies”. I was always thought it was weirdly spiritual for someone like her.”

Sabrina breaks into a small smile of recognition, looking relieved.

“Hazel loves burning sage, too. I’m not too good at it though, my room ends up smelling like burnt toast,” she says, then pulls back, looking uncertain.

Betty smiles, just for the sheer normalcy of that last sentence, or at least the normal feeling of it – like they were talking about cooking, or something. It’s the most normal thing she’s heard in the last hour. “Does Hazel do the whole tea thing? Mom has a whole box of herbal teas, she used to make them a lot when we were kids...” she trails off, as something occurs to her.

Sabrina nods. “Yeah Hazel has them. Zelda has her own recipes, actually – kind of a family heirloom – she’s better at making them.”

She looks at Betty curiously, seemingly having guessed what she’s been wondering. “Let me guess. You weren’t sick a lot as a kid?”

Betty wants to reply, but finds herself just nodding, surprised.

“Me either.”

Midge makes a small noise of surprise, and they both turn to look at her. She feels guilty, and by Sabrina’s expression, she also forgot she was in the room.

“Sorry, Midge,” she says apologetically. Midge looks wide-eyed, but not apprehensive. She shakes her head quickly. “That’s – that’s ok. Sorry to – uh – interrupt.”

Sabrina fixes her with a serious look. “I know today has already been... _a lot.._.but again, you can’t tell anyone about this. Especially for Betty’s sake.”

Midge nods rapidly again. “Of course.” She attempts a weak laugh. “Who would even believe me?”

Betty laughs, a strange, unexpected huff, in agreement. “Yeah, me too. Except maybe my mom. But I have no idea what she’d do if she knew I knew.”

She pauses, then continues, trying to quell anxiety with facts. “So you kind of implied that I might be – “ she breaks off momentarily, then continues again. “Like my mom. And you. Maybe. How do I know?”

Sabrina sighs, looking tired. “If you’re set against asking your mom to tell you the truth –“

Betty scoffs involuntarily. “Not likely she would.”

“Then maybe I can help you. I’m still learning this stuff myself, though.”

“Well I have to ask you something,” Midge pipes up. Betty and Sabrina immediately turn to look at her.

“What the hell was that thing that attacked me? I don’t think we got there in all the revelations.”

Betty nods her fervent agreement. Her mind might be full of questions and anxiety about this new revelation, but she hadn’t exactly forgotten about the inhuman creature that had seemingly tried to eat her friend.

Sabrina shudders slightly. “So, that...I’ve never seen anything like that before –“

Betty can’t hold back a disappointed “huh”, and Sabrina narrows her eyes somewhat.

“But I _think_ I know what it is, alright? I’m not dealing with monsters on a daily basis.”

Midge emits a thin half-laugh. “Yeah, I know the feeling.”

This somehow seems to break the tension in Sabrina’s expression, and she breaks into a small smirk.

“Yeah, well I’ll try and ask the aunts, just casually. Not sure I want to tell them what happened until I know why.” She looks at Midge. “And on that note, what happened with you at school, too.” Her smirk turns rueful. “At least you finding about this means I can really start figuring this out. Wouldn’t have been easy to do without alerting you.”

Betty and Midge both laugh, in the strange way that if they weren’t finding some humour in this, they’d be freaking out. But, Betty thinks, forewarned is forearmed. She’s come to really believe that lately.

  
****

Midge is suddenly startled by the shrill ringtone of her phone, and sees it spook the other two girls. They look at it nervously.

She looks down at it. “It’s Moose. Don’t worry – I won’t –“

Sabrina and Betty nod quickly in unison, and she picks up, walking out into the hall.

“Hey babe, I heard you left school sick – sorry I only just heard and then I didn’t have time to call until class ended –” Moose says. He sounds, so scared that she immediately feels guilty she hadn’t contacted him before this.

“Moose, babe, hey, slow down,” she replies softly, wishing she could comfort him personally, be there with him. But being here feels important. Like a mix of fear and exhilaration in that – if monsters were going to try to attack her anyway – at least she was with the people who might know how to fight them.

“It’s ok. I was a bit nauseous, then I was sick, and so I went home. It’s ok,” she says, calmly.

“Are you sure?” he asks, sounding surprised. “Just, I heard it was worse – someone said you were...bleeding –“

“It was a nosebleed,” she cuts him off, trying to reassure him. “You know better than believe the worst of the rumour mill at school.”

“Mhm,” he agrees quietly.

Something occurs to her, and she’s unable to explain why more than a horrible jolt in her gut. “You’re ok though? Nothing like that happen to you recently?”

“No...” comes his confused voice, slowly, over the line. “Babe are you ok? You sound kind of...worried. I am come around and see you now, if you want, Coach’d let me off practice.”

She looks into the living room, which is still a mess and feels a stab of renewed panic. “No, no – uh, don’t worry. You go to practice. Sabrina took me home, she’s staying with me till Mom gets home, she’s been great, don’t worry,” she tries to assure him worriedly.

“Oh ok,” he says, with an unmistakable note of hurt. She winces, wishing she could just tell him all of this madness. But it really, truly wasn’t her secret to tell.

“Sabrina, the new girl?” He says suddenly. “Did you find anything out from her?”

Her stomach clenches guilty. “Uh no. I don’t think she knows anything about it,” she lies.

“Oh,” he says again, definitely disappointed. “I really thought we were onto something there.”

She cringes silently. “Yeah, so did I. I’m sorry babe.”

“Yeah,” he says, dazedly. “Well, call you later?”

“Yeah, totally,” she says, dreading having to lie to him again.

“Bye then, Midge. Love you,” he says, somewhat awkwardly.

“Love you,” she echoes, and listens to him hang up.

 _This better be worth it,_ she thinks. But until she knows more, he’s safer living in blissful ignorance of all of this crazy bullshit. He deserves to be protected as long as possible.

  
***

Moose hangs up, feeling uncomfortable.

He knows, really, that it’s probably fine. Or it should be – but no, it doesn’t feel right. Midge used to always let him know if she was sick, and she always liked to be comforted.

She’d been weird since she left the hospital, really. Nothing had felt, properly right. And there were the dreams. Which, she was being very confusing about now.

He irritably pulls out the bag of his practice clothes out of his locker with more force than necessary and almost brains someone passing by when he over balances.

“Ow, could you look, idiot?” a perturbed, but familiar voice says. As he turns around, Kevin is standing behind him, rubbing his nose.

“Oh man, I’m so sorry –“ he says, apologetically. “I should have been looking, I’m sorry.”

Kevin looks markedly less perturbed by this, now he seems to have gotten over the initial shock.

“It’s – fine,” he says, with a small smile. “You football guys don’t tend to apologise, so you’re ahead on points.”

Moose can’t help smiling widely at this. “Well, that’s – good. Not the other guys not apologising, uh – “ he adds.

“No, I got it,” Kevin replies, smiling too. Neither of them says anything for a moment. Somewhere in his mind, he knows the likelihood of one of his teammates ruining this moment by hooting, wolf-whistling or yelling something dumb only gets likelier the longer they stay like this. Kevin has such a nice smile though. He’s heard some people say it’s too wide, but those people are idiots.

“So, football practice?” Kevin asks, and Moose blinks.

“Uh, yeah,” He stumbles out.

“I’d better go, then,” Kevin says. “So...see you around, Moose,” he pauses, then turns to go.

“Kevin!” he calls, without thinking about it too much. Kevin turns back, looking surprised.

“What are you doing after school tomorrow?”

Kevin looks presently surprised now. “I am...free.”

He smiles. “Wanna hang out?”

  
***

Sabrina stares at the mess of the living room with Midge by her side. Betty had gotten a text from mom and had decided going home without a fight was the best way to avoid suspicion. She’d left, apologising for not being able to help clean up and promising to meet up with them at school tomorrow.

Midge had calmed down a lot from the attack, but unfortunately, that left her mentally able to start dealing with the mess.

“Well, not gonna lie, it’s bad. But I think I know what to do,” Sabrina says, determinedly.

Midge looks at her with tentative hope. “You do? Will it take long?”

Sabrina shakes her head. “Not that long. Five to ten minutes, tops.”

Midge looks at the black streaks across the back of the couch, and sighs in relief. “Thank God. Thank you. I have no idea what I’d tell my mom.” She surveys all the debris. “You’re sure you can fix this much?”

Sabrina smiles, unexpectedly even to her. “You haven’t seen my Aunt Zelda’s painting room before a cleaning spell. She’s made me do them for practice in the past.”

Midge smiles, the least anxious she’s looked since the incident at school.

“You ready? Don’t freak out, ok?” she says and Midge nods rapidly. “I’m only gonna freak out if I can’t get this room clean before Mom comes home.”

Sabrina feels the energy vibrating along her veins, into her fingertips and says the words and the room begins to set itself right, black marks fading and furniture repairing as if on rewind.

“Woah,” Midge breathes. “You are so fucking _cool._ ”

Sabrina can’t help smiling. A warm feeling seeps into her skin. It’s probably just the residual feeling of the magic. Or maybe not.

Midge turns to her suddenly, looking worried again.

“What do you think is wrong with me? The doctors said I was fine, they let me go –“she asks, quietly panicked.

“I know, you told me,” Sabrina cuts her off, as gently as she can. “It might be nothing to do with – this,” se gestures to the living room.

Midge nods, but doesn’t look convinced.

Sabrina turns to her, fully, and looks her in the eye.  “But if it is – Midge, I’m gonna do everything I can to figure it out, and fix it for you.”

“What if it – can’t be fixed?” she replies after a moment, very quietly.

 Sabrina instinctively closes her hand around Midge’s. “Then we’ll – figure it out, ok?”

Midge smiles the slightest smile. “Ok.”

  
***

Sabrina searches through the herb shelves, trying not to make too much noise. Technically, she’s welcome to use these herbs – for cooking, or magic, “or if you would like to have a hallucinogenic experience in a safe space” according to Zelda – but she still has no idea whether to say anything to the aunts yet.

She’s not in the habit of keeping things from them generally – but until she knows a little more about the facts of the situation, she doesn’t want them to freak out.

“Wormwood, wormwood…” she mutters.

“What are you making?”

Sabrina freezes, and turns around as casually as possible.

Zelda’s come into the kitchen, smiling peacefully and going to fill the kettle up with water.

“Uh – I’m –“

“You want tea? Or are you making some already?” Zelda interrupts dreamily.

Sabrina is quietly thankful Hazel is still out on her run, because she would almost certainly be more suspicious.

“No, thanks Zel –“ she replies. “I’m just making potion, for a friend who’s feeling a little sick. I told her it’s homeopathic.”

Zelda laughs. “Well it is, in a way.” She smiles at Sabrina. “Nice you’ve made a friend.”

Sabrina nods, wondering if she can get away with this.

Zelda cocks her head. “She’s sick? Is it the girl we talked about?”

 _Damn._ Sabrina tosses up her options – denial, sure but she had said she was going to figure out what was going on already to them; or a version of the truth. She goes with the latter.

“Yeah, actually –” She stops, realising this might be the perfect opportunity to learn some things without revealing everything that happened at Midge’s house a few hours earlier. “Something really weird happened to her in Bio today. Do you know, outside of maybe radiation poisoning - which I think we can rule out for now – if some kind of spell or potion might cause an otherwise healthy person, given a very recent clean bill of health by doctors, to start – bleeding from the nose and eyes?”

Zelda looks a little less dreamy, and more focused at this. “Nothing – good, I don’t think…This happened to your friend, today?” she says, sounding worried.

Sabrina nods quickly.

“Was it a lot of blood? Did it last or did it stop pretty quickly?” Zelda asks, getting to the point.

“Uh – it was more like, thin lines, like tears? It didn’t last long. But she did throw up about a minute after.” Sabrina explains, trying to remember everything correctly.

Zelda thinks, looking at the kettle. “It could be a lot of things – but if there’s something magic-based in her system, that’s causing something like that? Doesn’t sound good. And you’re sure she’s not a witch?”

Sabrina almost laughs. “I’m pretty certain.” If the afternoon’s shocks had provided anything, it was absolute certainty that whatever was happening with Midge, she hadn’t – at least knowingly – done it to herself.

“So you’re making tincture of wormwood, aaand – belladonna, then?” Zelda guesses. She’s always known her potions and herbal ‘healing’ teas, enough to sell a few low-power ones on the side, packaged as ‘homeopathic cures’. Which also helps curb demand.

“Yep, among other things,” she answers, checking her mental list of ingredients.

Zelda looks at her with concern. “Let me know what the results are, ok? I might be able to help your friend.”

Sabrina nods. “Sure.”

Zelda looks at her, closer. “You look kind of rattled, sweetheart. Is it just what happened with your friend today – or is it something else?”

Sabrina shakes her head, trying to end the conversation. “Just that.”  She walks to the kitchen doorway.

Zelda looks at her. “You’d tell me if something else happened, right, Sab?”

Sabrina pauses. She doesn’t lie to Zelda, it feels wrong. She’s not technically lying, but she’s not totally being honest with her, either. And, she hasn’t really dealt with it since she had to look after Midge, and explain everything and clean up – but she does still feel a little shaken by their run-in with that creature.

Zelda would know what to say. Maybe she can get some information, without totally putting herself in it with them.

“I –“ she starts, hesitantly, thinking of a believable version of the truth. “I saw something, down by the forest today – I was walking by, and I can’t be certain but you’ve told me about them – it was kind of black and shapeless, but like, humanoid, but like oily, black oil –“ she continues, and realises she’s getting goosebumps just thinking about it, speeding towards her.

“You saw a Shade? In the forest?” Zelda cuts her off, looking shocked.

She nods, hoping her real fear is enough to sell her fake story. “Have you ever encountered one?”

“Only a few times,” Zelda says, seriously. “Did it see you? What did it do?”

Sabrina shakes her head, just going with the lie now. “No, It was kind of gliding slowly in the opposite direction and didn’t see me. What do they usually…want?” This is really the thing she wants to know. She watches Zelda closely.

Zelda thinks. “That is odd. They have really good senses, and can usually tell if there’s something wrong…”

“Wrong how?” Sabrina asks, feeling more nervous.

“It’s hard to explain,” Zelda replies, looking pensive and worried. “They sense breaks in places with higher magical concentrations – it’s said they used to come for changeling children. They saw them as wrong.”

“Do they come for witches?”

Zelda shakes her head. “If provoked, but from what we know – witches are a healthy part of the magical firmament. They come for what isn’t – what is a drain, what is out of place.”

The raging ball of anxiety in Sabrina’s stomach grows.

Zelda sighs.

“Changelings might be just a story though. People don’t get close enough to study them, usually, so our knowledge is limited. Either way, they’re bad news.”

Sabrina takes this in. Zelda makes a face like she’s just thought of something, and then the kettle boils with a high pitched screech that makes them both jump.

Zelda turns it off with a flick of her fingers, and gets up to pour the water. “Are you sure you won’t have any?” she says, sounding distracted.

“Uh, yeah, sure –“ Sabrina replies. “Zel – what is it?”

Zelda looks at her, something actually scared in her eyes. “One shade we can handle – but…they’re often thought of as harbingers, primarily. Of worse things coming.”

Sabrina’s stomach drops, snaking icy tendrils of fear into her veins. “You don’t think – she’s coming here?”

Zelda walks over to her, leaving the tea for the moment, and clasps her hand. “I really, really hope not. I doubt she’ll go easy on either of us.” Her eyes glisten. “But we swore we’d protect you. If she does finally catch up to us here, she’ll find a brutal fight waiting. And of course, there’s you.”

Sabrina looks down at her dark nails. _And there’s me. Hope I’m enough._

  
****

Midge struggles with her locker combination, as she does every day. Today though, she cannot deal with it. It had been hard enough to want to go to school, and sit through classes and pretend like things hadn’t gotten crazy yesterday. She keeps imagining that creature here, hissing at her, trying to attack her.

And Moose hasn’t called since their conversation yesterday. She understands why, he probably feels a bit shut out – but she wishes that he’d just understand. She’s too tired from everything else to deal with him being annoyed at her.

She lets out a noise of frustration and angrily wrenches the dial. The lock gives way in her hands and she realises she’s been struggling with it too forcefully.  She gasps, realising she’s somehow managed to put a dent in the side of the door where the lock was.

This isn’t even the first thing she’s broken since yesterday. And she’s never felt like she was very strong – Moose often carried her bags, and she was elfin enough to be on the cheer squad.

“Damn, Midge, anger management much?” comes a voice from behind her, sounding snotty and a bit pissed off. She closes her eyes for a second. This is another thing she can’t deal with right now.

Then she turns around.

“I messaged you a few times yesterday, to see if you were ok. I think I even called. Why didn’t you get back to me?” Tina complains, frowning.

“I’m sorry, Teen, I had kind of a lot going on yesterday,” she replies, trying to sound grateful. She doesn’t have the energy to work through a Tina-tantrum today, to assure her that she’s not mad and she’s valued and she means something. Sometimes, you just have to take that as a given.

“So much that you couldn’t even message me back?” Tina replies, already getting shriller.

Midge sighs. “Look, I’m really sorry. I basically went home and fell asleep. I felt sick, and I was exhausted, and then my mom wanted to know all of it. She totally freaked out about it.” That part was true, and part of why she was tired was the four hours they’d spent at the hospital running tests, after her mom freaked out on hearing of the school incident.

“You can get driven home by freak stranger bitch, who you’ve known for five seconds but you can’t find the time to tell me you’re ok after you ran out of class with your face bleeding?” Tina continues angrily, and Midge snaps.

“God, Tina, maybe I was exhausted! Maybe she offered, and I was glad to have someone look after me who wasn’t going to make it about them, for fucking _once_!”

Tina pales, and glowers at her, recoiling. “Well – fuck you, then!” she bites out, and all-but-runs-off.

Someone whoops. It’s probably Reggie. If she had the energy to turn and glare at them, she would. Grabbing her books and wedging her dented locker closed, she decides just getting to class will be enough of a victory.

But even that is too much, apparently, because before she can leave she sees Archie run up to her. “What was that about?” he says, gesturing in the direction Tina left.

She shakes her head. “Probably that she’s not the most important thing in my life, always,” she says, more bitchily than she meant to. “I didn’t message her back yesterday. It’s not a big deal.”

Archie looks surprised, but doesn’t say anything more about it. “I hope you’re feeling better, I heard you went home sick?”

She feels her gut twist, a little. “Yeah, but it’s ok.”

“Good,” Archie replies, uncertainly. He drops his voice. “Moose says you don’t think that new girl’s involved – in whatever that was?” he asks, looking confused.

“Yeah, I don’t,” she says, as matter-of-factly as she can. “I think we were getting worked up over nothing.”

Archie rears back, like he’s offended. “So, you think I’m crazy, now?”

She sighs. She just doesn’t have the energy to have another argument.

“No, I don’t Arch. I swear,” she tries, tiredly. “But have you had any more dreams like it? I haven’t. Moose would have told us if he had…it’s possible we just had similar dreams and decided they were the same. I don’t know…” she looks at him. “She’s a nice girl, ok? Don’t hassle her.”

He still looks offended. “I’m not going to – but, I have this feeling, like she’s a part of it – I can’t explain it ok?” he protests.

She can’t look him in the eye and tell him he’s totally wrong. “Look, I have to get to class. I’m sure you do.”

“Midge, come on!” he says, and his tone is suspicious. “Why are you – hiding something from me? I thought we were in this together!”

“Well, I think you’re blowing it out of proportion. I gotta go, Arch,” she says, not looking at him as she walks off.

She feels terrible for lying to him. Not as bad as lying to Moose, but it’s not her. It’s like as if yesterday hadn’t been terrible and terrifying enough, life was now lining up people she cared about for her to hurt. And as much as she wished they’d just let it go, she admittedly was the one who was in the wrong.

As if on cue, Moose walked by with his football buddies, and she caught his eye for a moment. It seemed like he was going to stop, and then he just kept walking.

She would just skip and go home now, but her mom had wanted to take today off to be there if she was ill again, and she’d had to work to convince her that she was ok. She’d feel guilty if she took advantage of that to go home. And everywhere else worth going tended to have a policy about not accepting students before the end of school.

She blows out a breath, and steels herself for Algebra.

  
****

“…and he was like, oh _On The Road’s_ the great American Novel, truly the best American novel written in the twentieth century, maybe even still unmatched in the twenty- first…”

Betty picks at her lunch, unable to concentrate on the flow of conversation. How do you learn something like this – that you’re probably irrevocably different, that your world is much scarier and larger than you thought – and go to school the next day, and eat lunch with your friends like nothing’s changed?

“…what about that, Mr Thomas?” Veronica continues in the background of Betty’s thoughts. “And I said, you’re so totally right. Furthermore, I agree that Toni Morrison is a hack, who couldn’t hold a candle to Kerouac’s most drugged-up stream of consciousness scribblings.”

It was insane. She’d barely slept last night thinking about it. She didn’t have confirmation about it, yes – but it made sense for her mother, and all the sides of her that had never made sense together. And if her mother was one, she probably was too. Just another family secret she didn’t apparently need to know. And what if Polly was – and she wasn’t even in town anymore, and phone service was limited wherever the hell she was.

Not that she’d asked her mom about it. She knew her well enough to predict her reaction to this – she’d either deny it, or be furious that she’d managed to find out without her. And what was she even supposed to say? _“Hey mom, is this why you didn’t like Harry Potter when I first started reading it?”_ or _“Hey mom, do you feel like the three old witches in Macbeth are good representation?”_

“…and that’s when I ate his eyeballs, just plucked him from his head –“

She finally tunes in, hearing Archie say, “What the hell are you _talking_ about, Veronica?”

“And they’re back!” she says, giving them a very unimpressed look. It’s something else; she’s practiced at it, probably since she was a little girl. It says, ‘I am too sophisticated to convey this with any vulgar actions, but just know, I’m not happy with you. That was a mistake.’

“I have no wish to make you guys listen if you’re uninterested, but I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly charming conversationalist, so what is going on with you guys?” Veronica asks coolly.

Archie reddens. He – come to think of it – has been kind of restless and annoyed all lunch. “Nothing.”

Betty shakes her head, trying to shake out the muddied headspace she’s been in all day. “I’m sorry, V. I barely slept last night.”

Archie looks at her funny. “You didn’t have any, weird dreams, did you?”

She looks at him, utterly confused as to what his angle is. “No – what? Why?”

He shakes his head and looks away. “Don’t worry about it.”

There is an awkward silence that falls over the table.

“Well, this is an enjoyable lunch – Archie’s annoyed, you’re distant, I’m talking to myself – it’s enough to make me miss Jughead,” Veronica says, put out. “I’m sure at his new school his friends listen to _his_ charming anecdotes.”

She feels guilty and smiles apologetically across the table. “Sorry, sorry, I’m listening now.”

Veronica looks concerned. “Why didn’t you get any sleep? Is it family stuff again?”

“You could say that,” Betty replies, before she can stop herself. “It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.”

“You know you can talk to us about it, we’re no strangers to family drama – right, Arch?” Veronica says, subtly prodding Archie.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he agrees, and she’s certain he has no idea to what.

“Yeah I know,” she replies, and doesn’t believe herself.

She looks down at her lunch, which she’s barely finding appetising. Usually, she’d tell them anything. It would be exciting, maybe, if it was happening to someone else. But this was personal, and insane-sounding, and if they got hurt because she broke her promise to Sabrina not to say anything – she couldn’t even think about that. They had enough to deal with, anyway.

Across the field, she sees Sabrina walk out with her lunch tray, in her usual all-black get up. Then she notices Midge come out of the school building, and make a beeline for Sabrina.

Looking at them, she realises she’s not going to be able to put her mind at ease here. The only people she can talk to about this are over the other side of the field.

“I – I gotta go,” she says, quickly packing up her things. “I’ll see you guys later, ok?”

“What? Betty!” Veronica says, completely bewildered, and more than a little annoyed.

“Where are you going?” Archie asks, similarly annoyed.

“I gotta ask someone something,” she says vaguely, getting up to leave.

She sees Archie turn to look behind him, at whoever she’d seen. She walks off hastily, wondering briefly what’s going on with him now. Whatever it is, she doesn’t have time to worry about it.

“So, anyone get any sleep last night?” she asks, catching up to Sabrina and Midge.

They look similarly tired.

“Not a lot.” Midge says.

“I was up late getting everything ready for the tests,” Sabrina says in an undertone, and yawns.

Midge looks determined. “The sooner we know what’s going on with me the better,” she says, and turns to Sabrina. “I kind of – broke my locker today. I don’t know how. Is that – important?”

“Well, it’s not unimportant,” Sabrina drawls. She looks at Betty. “I’m glad you’re here, actually – I learnt something about that _thing_ ,” she says quietly, eyeing the few students at the tables. “And I think – wait, why is your friend on the warpath?”

“What?” Betty says, and turns.

“Oh, no -” Betty and Midge say in unison.

Archie is storming up to them, looking disgruntled.

“I knew it!” He says dramatically. Betty puts on her best casual-innocence expression. Midge frowns. Sabrina looks confused.

“What?” She asks him. “What are you doing here? Why did you follow me?”

“I wasn’t following you,” he says, looking at Midge. Now she’s confused too. Midge doesn’t seem to be, though.

“I told you to let it go – am I not allowed to be friends with her? I barely know _you_ , for Christ’s sake!” she says, irritably, like they’ve had this conversation.

“So catch me up, what are you telling him to let go? And when did you start hanging out?” she butts in, confused. They ignore her.

“Sure, you can be friends, jeez! But she’s involved though, isn’t she? You’re protecting her?” he says frustrated. He looks at Betty, suspiciously. “And I didn’t think you knew her – is she part of why you’ve been so weird today?”

For someone so damn oblivious most of his life, he occasionally hits the nail right on the head. It’s not always a good thing, for her. She hates this side of him that also occasionally emerges – the one that demands answers, crashes into situations like an angry, drunk bull in a china shop, assumes that everything is centred on him.

“ _She_ has a name, thanks, not-jolly ginger giant,” Sabrina finally cuts in irritably, looking totally puzzled as to his presence. “Who the hell _are_ you?”

He looks at her, finally, perhaps even surprised she doesn’t know. Like Betty might have mentioned him as a town landmark on her welcome tour, _there’s the library, established around 1942, and there’s the school’s golden boy, established 2001_. 

“Who the hell are _you_?” he replies exasperatedly. “You come here, and suddenly people are getting shot, and –“

“Don’t be ridiculous - you can’t blame her for that!” Midge retorts.

“I think you’re confusing causation and correlation, Big Red,” Sabrina snaps, even though his puzzled glare back shows he absolutely is not, probably because he has no idea what it means. Betty would know, having tried to explain it before.

“ – and I’ve never seen you before, but I’m pretty sure I dreamt about you, and your house, before I met you, and Midge did too –“ he continues ranting.

“You what now?” Sabrina cuts him off blankly, and everyone turns to look at Midge. She looks taken aback, and then slightly guilty.

“I was going to tell you about them, but –“ she says to Sabrina, then looks back to Archie. “You think it was her, in the dream? That’s why you’re so sure she’s involved?”

He nods fervently.

There is an awkward silence. Betty can tell Sabrina’s probably wondering how to ask them both about it, without revealing anything that one of them knows and the other one doesn’t.

“What dreams have you been having? Or – sharing?” Betty asks, to break the silence. She’s surprised by how much less weird it sounds to her after yesterday.

Archie looks at Midge, and she nods. He looks at her and Sabrina, anger fading into anxiety. “A few nights ago, I had a vivid dream that I was running after a short, dark-haired girl –“

Sabrina narrows her thickly-made up eyes. “Thanks, could be anyone.”

He frowns at her and keeps going. “And I saw a blue cottage, and a black bird landing on it. I didn’t think it meant anything, then Midge mentioned something very similar, and we realised we’d had the same dream.”

Sabrina scrutinises him. “How do you know it was me, if you were running after me?”

He looks at Midge, then back to Sabrina. “I was thinking about it – I never remember dreams, but this was, very…real. I didn’t remember it at first, but I saw your face, for a moment. I recognised your makeup,” he looks anxious and unsure, pausing like he’s wondering whether to continue. “You looked…scared.”

No one says anything. Sabrina looks even paler under her makeup.

“Why do you think it’s my house you saw…” she asks, then seemingly puts it together. She looks at Midge. “Your boyfriend – he’s one of the footballers, right? Stocky, dark haired?”

Midge nods, surprised. Betty feels like they’re on the edge of discovering something, a part of the picture on the jigsaw box they didn’t realise they needed.

“He had the dream too, didn’t he?” she says, looking at them both. She breathes out an anxious breath, seeing them nod. “He was the one who went to see Zelda. Did you know this?” she says tiredly, looking at Midge.

Midge looks uncomfortable. “Yes – but I was planning to tell you, but with everything –” she cuts herself off, seemingly remembering present company.

“Is that why you – started talking to me?” Sabrina says quietly.

“No! We were paired up for Bio, remember? But I wasn’t –“ Midge protests.

Sabrina cuts her off, scowling, and then turns to Archie. “Whatever. That’s super weird, and I don’t appreciate your friends harassing my family –” she says coldly, holding up a hand to silence him when he attempts to interrupt, “but I have no idea why you think I can help. Could you just leave me alone, do you think?”

He looks taken aback, and looks around at Midge, who glares at him, and then her. She feels supremely guilty about it, knowing Sabrina has to have an answer to his mystery, and going along with lying to him about it. But if she didn’t want him to know, it was probably better he didn’t.

“Maybe just take some time to cool off, Arch? I know you’re stressed,” she says, as nicely as possible.

He glares at them both for a moment, looking betrayed, and storms off.

“Wow, what a charmer. The jocks at this school are so fun to be around, as always.” Sabrina snipes.

“He’s my best friend,” Betty replies, feeling like she should defend him. She hasn’t been very loyal otherwise, lately.

Sabrina makes a somewhat derisive noise. “He’s usually…less of an asshole, really,” she finishes weakly. 

The moment he’s safely out of earshot, Midge turns to Sabrina.

“I know, it sounds bad – but I swear, I didn’t befriend you just to - get information, or whatever. I just wanted to know why I would have dreamed about your – house, and if you knew anything about it,” she says hurriedly. “You saved me. That means something to me… I wouldn’t – I didn’t – lie to you.”

Betty feels uncomfortable, like this should be a private argument. Both girls look unhappy, and she wonders if it isn’t about something else.

Sabrina sets her lips in a thin, dark line, and looks around uncomfortably. Betty wonders whether she should just leave.

“Ok, whatever. We don’t have the time to worry about that,” she says briskly, and finally looks at Midge. “I’ll see you after school, if you want a lift home so we can start the tests as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, that would be good, thanks.” Midge replies quietly.

“You should probably ask your mother about it all, alright?” Sabrina says quickly, then at Betty’s expression, “or look through her drawers for a small doll, or figure. It’ll probably be blonde. Bring it to me if you do.”

“What?” she asks, but Sabrina’s already walking off.

Midge watches her go, looking miserable. Betty looks at her, and tries to think of something sympathetic to say.

“Whatever that’s about – she probably needs a moment to digest it. I know you, though – you’re not a fake friend. She’ll get over it.”

Midge looks at her, unconvinced. “Thanks, Betty. I hope you’re right.”

She sighs. “God, Archie’s a fucking menace sometimes, right?”

She’s surprised into a guilty laugh. “Don’t I know it…It’s safer for him not to know though, right?”

Midge nods, like she’s trying to convince herself of the same thing. “Right.”

  
***

Midge sees Sabrina’s car – small, black, at least a decade old – roll around to the curb where she’s waiting.

Sabrina doesn’t say anything as she gets in. Midge doesn’t know what to say. She _had_ been planning to tell her about the dreams, but then it somehow became one of the less weird things to happen in the last few days.

“Come on, are you just going to not talk to me?” she says finally, just to break the silence.

“I’m not _not_ talking to you.” Sabrina says shortly, not taking her eyes off the road.

A moment passes. “Why are you even still helping me, then?”

“Because it’s important, regardless of how I –“ Sabrina starts, and breaks off. “And you deserve to know.”

Midge doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“Thanks.”

When they pull up outside Midge’s house, Sabrina actually looks at her. “And you’re sure your mom won’t get home till at least seven, right?”

“The Mayor has a late-running meeting she has to sit in on tonight, apparently, so we’re good.” Midge replies.

“Good,” she says determinedly. “We’ve got work to do.”

  
*

“So you’ve got that tarp ready?” Sabrina asks, checking through her bag.

“Yeah, although this isn’t going to mess everything up badly, right?” Midge asks, as they climb the stairs to her room.

“Most likely not, but that’s why we’re not doing it in the living room. If the shit really hits the fan, we’ll be able to hide it longer while I figure out what to do.” Sabrina deadpans.

“I know you’re joking, but I really need that not to happen. My mom will kill me –“ Midge says, and pauses, about to open the door. “Oh..”

To her horror, she can feel her tear ducts already working and wants to tell them to chill out. She’s not even sad!

Sabrina can’t really hide her concern, even though her makeup tends to make her look more distant and unimpressed, even when he isn’t.

“What’s wrong?” she says, turning to look at her.

She shakes her head. “It’s so dumb,” she says, wiping her hand at her eyes rapidly. “I didn’t die! Right now, I try to say and do normal things, and suddenly I’m thinking about –“ she breaks off. “And all of this weird shit isn’t helping.”

Sabrina raises her hand slightly, seems to think better of it, and drops it. “I’m really sorry that happened to you,” she says quietly. She looks down for a moment, then meets her eyes again. “I know what it’s like to have your normal life just taken away from you. I didn’t always know I was a witch...I had a hometown. Friends.”

She seems younger, for a moment, talking about it. Midge is instantly curious, and sad, because it can’t have been too long ago.

“Why did you move here then?” she asks.

Sabrina sighs. “This isn’t the second place I’ve lived in. It’s always somewhere new, every so often.”

“Why?” Midge asks again. Sabrina looks at her, uncertainly, and for a moment she sees real fear in her eyes.

“It’s not important,” she says, and gestures quickly for Midge to open the door.

Midge does so, not asking anymore questions, even though she’s dying to. What is she so scared of? How long has she been moving around, and why?

Sabrina notices the tarpaulin folded up on her bed, and goes for it. “I’m going to spread this out on the floor in the centre of the room, ok?”

“Sure,” Midge says. It’s pretty much the only space in the room to do that, anyway.

Midge helps her spread it out on the floor, and watches her take bottles and packets out of her bag and start setting their contents in a rough, wide circle.

She has to admit, that as scary as the last few days have been, she’s kind of excited to watch Sabrina work. It had been no less cool seeing her fix the living room.

“Ok, it’s ready,” Sabrina says, and beckons her over.

“I know it’s a pain, but you need to step into and stay inside the circle, while we do this or it won’t work,” Sabrina says, but she steps into it without protest.

“Please. Cheryl does this at practice for fun, sometimes for ages. While holding a leg. Or a teammate.”

Sabrina looks confused, and Midge remembers she’s been here less than a fortnight. “She’s cheer captain. She has...issues. Her family are not great, so...” It’s somewhat of an understatement, considering, but she doesn’t want to go into the _other_ murderer who was in the town. It’s really way too many murderers in such a short space of time, and she doesn’t want to put more drama on Sabrina.

“Red-head, kind of psycho?” Sabrina asks, rifling through her bag.

“That’s the one,” she says, with a smirk.

Sabrina seems to have found what’s she’s looking for, a small leather bound book. “Ok so I’m in trouble if Zel or Hazel need this, but I took our book. It has the spell in it I’m going to use. Also it might give me some information on what we find out.”

Midge looks at it. It’s not that impressive. It’s not even that thick. “That’s your book of shadows? It’s quite – thin.”

Sabrina clutches it to her chest, looking almost offended on its behalf. “TV is always more glamorous, ok?” she looks at it, almost comforting it. “Beside she’s fine. It’s a magic book, it doesn’t just show its contents to anyone with eyes, ok?”

“Ok, ok, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to insult the book,” she says, but can’t help smiling spite of herself. Sabrina attempts a serious look, but the corners of her mouth pull up as she opens the book. She puts her hand above the open book, and says a single word in a language Midge doesn’t recognise. To her mild surprise, she sees the book’s pages begin to gain colour and lines, from what she can see.

Midge smiles to herself. She sees Sabrina look over, and catches her eye, but Sabrina immediately busies herself with the book.

“Ok, I think I’ve got it,” she says putting the book down, and picking up a bottle and bringing it over. It does not look fun to imbibe.

“So, what are we trying to here, exactly?” she asks, tentatively.

“We’re trying to detect if there’s magic in your system, where, and if so, what it’s doing to you,” Sabrina says, matter-of-factly. Midge shivers slightly.

“What do you do if it’s there? Can you get it out?” she asks, feeling more anxious now.

“Yeah, it should be fine. If it’s not meant to be there, it’ll find a way to come out. Magic is good like that.” Sabrina says, fairly reassuringly. Midge tries to take this in good faith, just now thinking that even though Sabrina is far more skilled at this than she will ever be – being the one with the power – it’s still a little like getting in the passenger seat with a learner driver.

But then, she was still on her learner’s permit, so who was she to judge?

She hands Midge, the bottle. It’s only small, but still. “I’m gonna need you to drink that. It’s not much.”

Midge wrinkles her nose at it, holding it up. “I was afraid you were gonna say that. It looks nasty.”

“I know, but it actually tastes fine. A bit vanilla-y,” Sabrina replies.

Midge eyes the bottle. “Alright then. Here goes.” She downs it in one go, and almost feels like throwing up.

“That was the _worst_. I hate you, why?” she chokes out.

“Had to get you to drink it, sorry,” Sabrina says, not looking very not sorry.

Midge rolls her eyes exaggeratedly.

“If you hated that, you’re not gonna love what’s next.”

Midge sighs. “Just tell me.”

Sabrina holds up a small packet of what looks like a thin, greenish-brown paste. “We want to be able to direct any energies we find.  To do that, it needs a kind of landing strip, which is where this stuff comes in. So I’m gonna try and direct it to your arm,”

“So you need to rub that stuff onto my arm?” Midge guesses. She sighs again. “Ok do it. No worse than when Tine and I tried mud masks for the first time,” she says determinedly, then frowns.

Thinking about that gives her a pang of guilt about Tina. How is she supposed to fix that right now, though? Not to mention, Tina’s sudden and obsessive hatred of Sabrina wasn’t likely to make it easier to keep being friends with Sabrina.

The paste is cool going on, but uncomfortably damp. Midge allows Sabrina to dab rough-looking symbols on her arm. She could feel very silly, really – if she didn’t trust Sabrina’s determination to understand the situation. Still, her heart is beating fast, anxious with anticipation. She’ll know if there’s anything supernatural about what’s happening to her soon. Hopefully, she’ll be able to deal with it.

“It’s very – moist,” she says, then wrinkles her noise. “You’re not just – fucking with me because you’re still mad?” she half-jokes.

Sabrina shakes her head, with a small smirk. “I’m not – mad at you, ok?”

“You seemed pretty mad before.” Midge replies, trying not to sound whiny.

Sabrina continues working on the symbols. “I’ve thought about it. I – suppose I was surprised you were so – friendly to me. Girls like you and your friends don’t tend to be so much.”

“Who are girls like me?” she returns, slightly hurt.

Sabrina shakes her head, but doesn’t look up. “I don’t mean – just, popular-type girls. Hearing that you might have had a motive to – “she pauses. “Maybe I was mad. I’m not now, ok? You’re not that girl, I realise that. I just – I don’t make a lot of friends, generally. But – I like you, so –“ Sabrina suddenly breaks off, colouring.

“Good, cause I like you too,” she replies quietly, smiling now. Sabrina looks up from the symbols, finally. She’s closer than Midge had realised she was.

“Uh, you’re all done,” Sabrina says suddenly. Midge smiles more. Sabrina doesn’t move back for a second.

Then she turns away quickly and busies herself with lighting the candles she’s set up around the circle.

“Are you ready?” Sabrina asks, picking up the book.

Midge feels a moment of panic, again. “Will it hurt? Don’t lie to me this time!”

Sabrina looks at her. “I promise, it won’t hurt. It might tickle, though.”

Midge nods, feeling a thrill of the same combination of fear and anticipation.

Sabrina reads from the book, more words she doesn’t recognise. Midge barely knows the French she’s been studying since freshman year, but this sounds old. Ancient, even. An heirloom of a distant time, secretly surviving into the modern world.

“Feel anything yet?” Sabrina asks, in a pause. She doesn’t, and feels slightly disappointed by that.

“No, maybe I –“ she trails off as she feels it. It’s warm, and it seems to flow from two spots on her chest and into her veins, like wildfire, making goosebumps rise on her arms. She gasps.

“Fuck, do you feel like this all the time?”

The corners of Sabrina’s mouth quirk upwards again in recognition, as she continues chanting. “Not all the time,” she adds.

She had thought she might be scared of what Sabrina would find, what kind of possible virus might be growing inside her, but right now she just feels – good. Powerful. Not even to manipulate this feeling, but like – she could climb mountains or jump out of a plane, or lift a truck. She laughs out of pure exhilaration.

Now she feels it being drawn to her arm – the paste symbols have warmed up like a hotplate, but it’s not actually uncomfortable. Sabrina looks she’s concentrating intently, gesturing like she’s pulling a fine string out slowly.

Midge gasps again as she actually sees something rise out of her arm. Electric blue sparks, dancing above the symbols.

“It’s ok,” Sabrina reassures her quickly, focused on the sparks, but very clearly staying out of the circle. “Does it hurt?”

Midge shakes her head slowly, watching the sparks. They don’t actually hurt, as much as she can feel their heat.

“Ok, I’m going to take it now,” Sabrina tell s her.

Midge watches the sparks fly out of her arms and into Sabrina’s hands. Her brown eyes momentarily look the same colour as the sparks, and she looks less like a girl and more like a force of nature. She blinks, and her eyes go back to normal, and she looks shocked for the most minor of seconds.

“Ok,” she says simply, like she’s taking stock.

“What does it mean?” she breathes, still feeling the sensation ghosting up her arms.

“Stay in the circle, ok?”

Midge nods.

“Someone – for some reason – has used a lot of magic on you. To put a spell on you. A _big_ one...But they’ve done a sloppy job, it’s chaotic, unstable.” Sabrina says quickly, already looking at the book and saying another word to it.

Midge gasps again, feeling her stomach drop. Sabrina looks up guiltily.

“Sorry – I shouldn’t have said it like that, it’s just my mind is going a mile a minute –” she takes a breath. “Don’t worry – all I have to do is reverse the spell by drawing the magic out of you. I’ve been practicing this sort of thing for years.”

Midge is only slightly mollified. “Ever reversed a spell this big?”

Sabrina looks at her. “Well – twice.”

Midge sighs. “So you reverse it, and everything goes back to normal?”

“Pretty much,” Sabrina replies, with a reassuring, if slightly distracted smile.

Midge isn’t too reassured. Something’s bothering Sabrina, and she’s sure she hasn’t heard what it is yet.

“Ok, how soon can you do it?”

Sabrina looks up from the book. “Let’s do it now. It shouldn’t hurt, ok, but you might feel a slight pinch as it leaves you.”

“Alright,” Midge says resolutely. “I can take it, if it means getting back to normal.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sabrina says, with a hint of irony. “You ready?”

Midge breathes in. “As I’ll ever be.”

Sabrina begins to chant from the book, and suddenly it feels like something is being ripped from her – and it’s putting up a fight.

“Wait,” she says faintly, but pain knocks the next words out of her mouth.

She feels her eyes watering from the pain, and she automatically tries to wipe them, but her hand comes away bloody. She can feel her nose bleeding too, but she can’t even think about it because her stomach is in so much agony, she feels like she’s going to be sick. Looking down at it, she sees that she’s bleeding in two places, and the red patch on her shirt is growing. Someone is screaming, and she can’t see or think. Then she realises it’s her, and her vision is going dark, and she just wants it to end. Sabrina’s darkly made up, terrified looking face, is the last thing she sees before passing out.

  
***

She wakes up, and her hand immediately goes to her stomach. But she can’t feel anything under the blood stains. She feels a little sick, but nowhere near as badly as she had before fainting.

Sabrina is at her side, looking frightened and holding a cup of something.

“I can’t do anymore potions, Sabrina,” she croaks.

“It’s just a calming tea, actually. I promise it _will_ make you feel better,” she says, smiling apologetically.

She takes it, and it does actually make her feel better. She’s not usually a herbal tea person, but this is actually calming her down.

She looks at Sabrina when she feels calm enough to ask. “What the _fuck_ just happened? Was that supposed to…” she trails off, thinking it can’t possibly have been.

Sabrina shakes her head. “No, I swear to God, it’s not supposed to go like that!”

She sips her tea, and looks at Sabrina. “So, then…what?”

Sabrina looks worried, but also totally confounded. “I don’t – I did the spell right, I know it, it _should have_ been fine…I think it’s more complex than I thought. I couldn’t undo it, because it hurt you –” she breaks off, looking miserable. “I’m so sorry, Midge, I tried to stop it as soon as I realised something was wrong, but it fought me. I’m so, so sorry,” she says, her expression full of guilt and remorse.

She shakes her head. “It’s – I know you would have stopped as soon as possible. I agreed. We’re in this together, right?” she says quietly.

Sabrina looks slightly less miserable. “Right.”

“Anyway it was me,” she says, looking into her tea morosely. Her throat still hurts from the screaming, but the tea is soothing it. “So…whatever’s inside me, you can’t fix?”

Sabrina looks at her like she wishes she had another answer. “I don’t know. I need to think about it. I’m not giving up, though.”

Midge stares back down into her tea, thinking it can’t possibly be good.

  
***

“So the dreams…do you wanna try and tell me about that?” Sabrina asks after a while, sitting against the bed. Sabrina’s made them fresh cups of tea, which Midge is surprisingly grateful.

She’d cleaned up the circle while Midge was in the shower, cleaning excess blood and paste from her face and body. Sabrina had also promised to get the bloodstains out of her clothes so her mom wouldn’t freak out, which she was especially grateful for.

“Right. The dreams,” she says, facing Sabrina and sipping from her cup. “Basically everything you heard.”

“So…you dreamt…about me?” Sabrina asks, slowly.

Midge feels her cheeks warm. “I – I don’t know. She was your height, hair like yours, wearing something you might wear. I don’t remember if you turned around thought.”

Sabrina takes this. “And the people you’ve shared them with – the boy that was in the attack with you, and the angry ginger one – Betty says his dad got shot. Do they think it was the same guy?”

Midge nods, feeling a chill just thinking about it. “If he’d actually managed to kill Mr Andrews, and shoot us, we’d have a serial killer and our hands.”

Sabrina looks curious about something. “I hate to ask you, but it’s important – but what was he like? Anything, I don’t know, off? Unnaturally off, I mean.”

Midge gulps, feeling goosebumps rising on her skin. “I barely saw him. His whole face was almost totally covered…but his eyes…they didn’t look right. Keller thought I was just being hysterical.”

“Keller?” Sabrina asks.

“Sheriff. As such.” Midge says, frowning slightly.

Sabrina thinks for a moment. “This might sound dumb, but is there anything about it you haven’t told me, about it or is that all?”

Midge thinks, then is reminded of something that makes her stomach twist. “The…time,” she says, looking down. “I woke up from the dream at 5:03am exactly. Then I found out the boys woke up exactly at that time, too.”

Sabrina looks surprised. “Well, time can actually be used to mark some spells…”

Midge drains her tea, and looks up. “5:03am. It’s when I woke up. In the car,” she gulps again. “After the attack.”

Sabrina’s eyes widen, and Midge can tell this means something to her.

“So – you didn’t have anything to do with them?” she asks quietly.

“No, I’m afraid not.” Sabrina says, looking troubled. “It sounds like…what we’d call a portent. A warning.”

“Of the future?” Midge says, and icy fingers of fear creep into her gut again.

“Kind of.” Sabrina says opaquely. “I’ve never done one before.”

Midge can feel her heart beating fast, and wishes she hadn’t finished her calming tea.

“I’m…afraid, Sabrina. I’m not built to deal with this,” she whispers.

Sabrina looks at her resolutely. “You’re stronger than you think, Midge. And, I’ve been dealing with this shit for ages. I won’t – I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She’s quite close, again, Midge realises.

Midge moves forward, and her phone rings on the bedside table.

Sabrina springs back, and she scrambles to get it, cursing whoever decided to ring at this very moment.

It’s Archie, of course. She scowls.

“Midge?” comes Archie’s shaken-sounding voice. “Something happened to us, I thought – I thought I should call you…something’s happened to Moose, his, his eyes –“

She feels a stab of fear. “Is he ok? What’s happening?”

“Yes, he’s ok now –” she hears a voice in the background, maybe Kevin, as Archie gets cut off.

“I know, - _I know_ –” Archie says hurriedly to someone in the background. “I gotta do, Moose is ok now, I’ll call you back.”

“Archie!” she shrieks, but he’s already hung up.

Sabrina looks at her, more anxious than ever.

“Moose – I think the same thing that happened to me, with him,” she says, her words coming out garbled in panic. “I think. I think he’s ok. For now.”

“Well, that’s good, right?” Sabrina says, like she’s trying to be comforting but not believing enough to sell it. Midge puts her angst about Moose to the side for a moment, noticing Sabrina staring at her shoes, looking uncomfortable.

“What is it?” she asks.

Sabrina looks at her. “I don’t know if you wanna hear this right now, Midge. Really.”

Midge frowns. “I think you need to tell me everything you can, ok? I’m done with just feeling scared and exhausted, and _not knowing anything!_ I can’t handle much more of it.”

Sabrina keeps looking at her for a long moment, looking conflicted.

Whatever battle she was fighting, she seems to reach a decision and starts speaking.

“I’ve formed a theory about all this. I’m warning you, you’re not gonna like it.”

“I’d rather know, Sabrina!” she replies, frustrated.

Sabrina swallows, looks down at her shoes again, and then back up at her grimly. “Your boyfriend is experiencing the same thing as you. Probably the same chaotic effects of strength and sickness. He had the same dream, and was in the same attack. Anyway you look at it – this all started a _few days ago_ … when you both _miraculously_ survived a close range shooting…”

Midge wants to her tell her to stop, but needs to know what she’s going to say. No matter the cost, even though she’s feeling dread only matched by what she felt when she woke up in a blood splattered car with what she thought was her boyfriend’s dead body next to her.

Sabrina looks at her, eyes shining with regret. Like she wishes anyone could tell Midge for her.

“I don’t think you survived that shooting, Midge. You didn’t have any serious injuries, and you should have…I think someone, very badly cast a spell and it brought you back to life. That’s why I couldn’t reverse it. Because,” Sabrina’s voice breaks. “It would kill you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally! i've been picturing the last scene in some form since I came up with this, and I'm quite happy with the way it turned out - as always, i love to know what you guys think, and hope you had restful/fortifying holiday breaks :))


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